


Fires Grow

by slash_harkens



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Character Study, Supreme Angst Combo, Toxic Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 09:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 29,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14746001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slash_harkens/pseuds/slash_harkens
Summary: How Locus was made: from soldier, to mercenary, to murderer, to monster. // HIATUS





	1. I. SOLDIER

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written as the backstory to [Reassembly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14067798), so although it seems like some scenes are taken from that fic, the truth is that they were selected from here. ("Fires Grow" doesn't end the same way "Reassembly" does, thank god.) So if you feel like you've read one of these chapters before, that's probably because you have, and also I wrote that fic too, and I promise I'm not plagiarizing anyone.

Once they’ve pried him from Gates’s side, Ortez is settled into a little hospital in the heart of human territory and left with twenty other soldiers in a communal wing. They just don’t have enough space to give him a private room.

Ortez lies on the hospital bed, feeling half dead, staring up at the ceiling, unsure if he has the energy to think, like an empty clockwork doll in need of rewinding. The other men and women are told that Gates and Ortez are to be left alone. In the haze, Ortez collects a handful of names of his new roommates: Choi, Riess, Cathman, Lowry, Alvaro are the ones closest to his bed. Lowry is missing an arm and a leg; Cathman lives on entire bottles of Xanax; Alvaro spends his days slumped over a tablet, poking at the screen and sharing nothing. They’ve all been through their share of war. Gates is nowhere to be seen. (Good riddance, Ortez thinks.)

Within a day, the other soldiers have pried answers out of him.

“You did _what_ to escape?”

“You threw her _where_?" 

“You tore it out with your _teeth_?”

It made sense in context, Ortez tries to explain, but it’s so hard to make them understand. There’d been ten miles of warzone between them and the nearest LZ. What was he supposed to do? Lie down and die? He hadn’t _left_ her there, she’d been already dead and infected and her body was better used as a method of useful crowd control. And aliens, apparently, were just as fleshy under their armor as everyone else, and teeth are the hardest substance exposed on a human body. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.

It’s logical. Rational. Sane. Even Gates had agreed with Ortez, which is a historical event in itself.

At night, after Ortez has scrubbed the entire hall down for threats and interrogated half the nurses to ease the quivering in the back of his head, he can hear the other soldiers whispering:

_“I’d rather have died than feed my mate to the dinos."_  

_“All the way from the south? That’s where the Sangheili keep the prisoners of war, don’t they? Do you think they experimented on him?”_

_“I heard he was an odd one before the battle, too. If anyone could have crushed a Sangheili’s skull with his bare hands, it’s him.”_

_“Being crazy does something to you, I guess.”_

* * *

 In the middle of the night, Ortez rises, a large shadow in the dark, and ghosts out of the ward. He can’t stand to listen to this. By morning, the rumors spread about some crazy man, stalking the halls at night, a wordless and faceless monster hunting for lonely soldiers to devour.

* * *

 Choi comes to check on him once and makes the mistake of not calling his name before touching him. Or maybe Choi did, and Ortez just didn’t hear, and Ortez nearly broke Choi’s arm off entirely by coincidence.

“Look, dude, it’s fine,” says Choi, when Ortez tries to apologize. “We all have it. I have it. No sweat.”

Ortez gives Choi a look that could curdle milk. It’s only when Choi backs off with his hands raised that Ortez remembers he meant to apologize.

Still. Ortez doesn’t “have” anything. He’s _fine_. There’s nothing wrong with him. He just wants to go back on the field. It’s the hospital driving him nuts, is all. He’s forgotten how to rest without the sound of gunfire. There’s nothing wrong with that. The Great War rages strong, and there's plenty of gunfire to go around.

He begins spending more time alone than in the communal ward. He keeps his back to the wall, dozing in and out of life, armed with a low-budget music tablet, waiting for the monster over his back to grab him by the throat and drag him to the battlefield, where he’ll die, but where he belongs. Any second now, his gut tells him; any second now, he’s going to die, and he’ll have to fight tooth and nail just to escape with his skin, reduced to some large animal fighting other animals in the most advanced wartime intergalactic empire ever rendered. (He never does die.)

The nurses come and usher the soldiers away whenever they notice them crowding Ortez, and Ortez doesn’t stop them, because so many people around _does_ make him feel—itchy. Eaton is the nurse assigned to their ward, but Ortez, apparently, is so special that he has a whole nurse to himself: A middle-aged white man named Millstein, who removes every shaving razor, knife, scissor, pill bottle, length of rope, metal utensil, breakable ceramic dish, and _certainly_ firearms from Ortez’s reach. Only Ortez is served meals on paper trays with plastic utensils, which ironically makes Ortez _more_ inclined to prove that he can kill a man with the handle of a plastic spoon. Only Ortez receives check-ups every half an hour, asking him if he’d like to keep a journal, if he’d like to read a book, contact his family, sign up for a therapy session, it’s okay, everyone else does it.

They talk like they’re laying Ortez down to die in his hospital bed.

Ortez refuses.

He didn’t survive a war just to die.


	2. Therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene was a repost from Reassembly, so y'all get two chapters today.

He does wind up in the therapist’s office as the nurses asked, because he’s submitted a form to be redeployed at first chance. It’s within two weeks of his arrival. He’s seen neither hide nor hair of Gates. He remains adamant to himself that this does not concern him.

There’s no reason why Ortez shouldn’t be deployed. He’s not permanently damaged, he just _looked_ in a bad way when he and Gates came in through the door. They’d been tired and thirsty and hungry and very, very dirty; easily remedied with rest, water, food, and a bath. The wound on his forehead had cauterized at the same time it’d been slit, so he’d rather not fuss over spilt milk. The twisted ankle, broken ribs, and bruises up and down the left side of his body should clear up by the time the form goes through.

There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just restless and nervous and wound up. Getting back on the field again will help.

He limps into the psychiatrist’s office—however a psychiatrist might be different from a psychologist or a therapist, he doesn’t know. From the manicure on her nails, he suspects that a psych eval for a bunch of dirty soldiers is below her pay grade.

Dr Hamid smiles. Seems friendly. “Good afternoon. Are you ready?”

She doesn’t waste time with bullshit. Ortez is relieved. “Yes, ma’am,” says Ortez.

They start with the basics: Name? Rank? Date of birth? Place of birth? “Reason for eval?” she asks, like she doesn’t know.

“Briefly captured,” he says. “Stranded behind enemy lines with one other squadmate.”

“Just captured? Or was there interrogation involved?”

She means torture. But nobody asked him questions while in captivity, so he’s not entirely sure what he’d call what happened in there. He has an ugly mark on his forehead and some bruises, but no broken bones—yes, really, they were only fractured—he has no missing limbs. There wasn’t blood, due to the cauterization of the laser blades. The Sangheili soldiers who’d caught him just wanted to play with their food before they ate it. Tenderize the meat, maybe.

“No,” says Ortez. 

She marks something down. Ortez is relieved that she doesn’t ask about feelings, or… whatever it is psychiatrists do. He’s given a report on the facts before. He’ll do it again.

“I’m going to ask you about some psychological symptoms. Yes or no if you have them.”

He nods.

Her list is brief and vague. Nightmares? Sometimes, but he had nightmares over forgetting his shoes before the war. Does he have flashbacks? No. Does he avoid situations that remind him of combat? He doesn’t tell her that he thinks the _opposite_ of avoiding might settle the jangling in his gut. Does he avoid crowds? He did that before the war. Has he forgotten large periods of the battle or his capture? Also quite the opposite. Is he startled by loud noises? Of course. Does he have trouble concentrating? Depends on what. Does he sit with his back to the wall in large areas with other people? That’s only practically and tactically sound for dangerous and unknown territory.

“Voices or other auditory hallucinations?” she asks, like trauma will make him schizophrenic overnight.

He answers no.

“Paranoia of surveillance or delusions of threat in the vicinity?”

He answers no.

“Do you have a feeling or conviction that there’s a threat in the vicinity?”

Of course he feels that. There _is_ a constant threat in the vicinity, not fifty miles away.

“Closer to home,” she says. “In the building.”

He’s in a building full of scalpels and soldiers. Supply lines run directly through this hospital, meaning entire crates of explosives. There _is_ a constant threat in the vicinity.

She checks something off. “Guilt over combat or sympathy for your captors?”

Ortez hesitates.

Dr Hamid reminds him of the rules of confidentiality.

He still hesitates, not because he doesn’t know where to begin, but because he knows _exactly_ where to begin and suspects where it’ll end.

Dr Hamid glances over his shoulder at the clock on the wall.

He wants to frame it objective facts: _The Sangheili have culture; they have kin; they have bonds; I don’t know what they’re saying, but I suspect they have hopes and fears, too_. But there’s no neutral way of putting that.

“Sometimes,” he says, eventually, “I suspect that I have killed enemy soldiers in error.”

“Do you mean against orders?” she asks.

“Under orders,” Ortez replies. “But still in error.”

She nods. Then she snaps her pen shut and puts her clipboard down. “Thank you,” she says. “I’ll take it from here. The UNSC should have a decision on your redeployment in a few weeks.”

A few _weeks_? Ortez will die in the meantime. “Can you guess?” he asks. “Am I allowed to know how I did?”

“Sounds like heavy delusions of nonexistent threats,” she says coolly. “And classic Stockholm syndrome, of course.”

He feels like he’s been punched in the gut. He stares at her in uncomprehending horror. “Delusions? _Stockholm_ syndrome?”

“Of course,” Dr Hamid says. “Surely you must realize. We’re deep in human territory, our planet is one of the most well-defended against glassing, and nobody here is intending to harm you. This hospital is meant to help you heal. There’s no reason to suspect your doctors or fellow soldiers of intending to harm you.”

“But there _are_ threats,” he insists. “We might be far from the front lines, but this planet is still at war. We can’t verify everyone’s loyalties, or account for all accidents…”

“The possibility of any human siding with the Covenant is nonexistent,” Dr Hamid says firmly. “That’s your delusion lying to you. I’m sorry to tell you that reality is not as you know it. Remaining vigilant against the lies your brain tells you is part and parcel of recovery." 

Ortez has never heard such a terrifying phrase as _reality is not as you know it_ , and she says it like a statement of fact.

“I’m not crazy,” he says, at a loss for anything else to say.

“Have you ever actually found proof of explosives or weapons inside this hospital?” she replies.

He says nothing.

“As for the Stockholm syndrome,” Dr Hamid continues, “don’t feel bad about it. It happens to so many no matter how long they were held in captivity. It enables even the most rational men to suffer traumatic bonding, as if the Covenant is anything but hostile and vicious towards humankind.”

“Not the Covenant,” he insists. “The people _in_ the Covenant.”

She raises her eyebrows. “ _People_?”

Ortez flushes darkly. “I... didn’t mean it literally. It’s a phrase. It’s supposed to make you understand.”

She says, “Hm.”

* * *

He only needs her to sign off on the papers. It doesn’t matter if he has—slight delusions, or whatever the phrase is. ( _Reality is not as you know it._ ) He can still function on the field. He’ll function _better_ , arguably, if he’s on his guard. Maybe that’s not _her_ reality, but on the battlefield, isn’t it true that everyone’s out to kill you? Isn’t it? 

(Please, God, let him not be crazy.)


	3. Animals

The truth is, he does hear things, and he’d only said no when Dr Hamid asked because he knows that the sounds are false. He hears noises most clearly when it’s quietest, when his ears strain to pick up any noise at all, and he knows that it’s his own brain generating nonsense out of nothing.

He hears Sangheili crying.

It’s the fact that he hears _Sangheili_ cries that drives him up the wall, because he’d seen those things gut his friends open from navel to neck; he’s seen their jaws crunch through struggling meat and bone; he’s seen their wide four-way grins, leering over him, a laser knife pressed to the spot between his eyes, mocking him and his X-marked helmet and all his many, many kills. He’s got a reason to hate them written on his _forehead_.

They were monsters, other soldiers said. A blight on this universe. Gross. Crazy. Wild animals who couldn’t be reasoned with.

But at night, in the dark, surrounded by twenty-something other soldiers who’d lost limbs, friends, peace of mind to those dinos, here’s Ortez: unable to stop remembering the one wounded Sangheili soldier who’d tried to surrender, or the one who’d gone back for the corpse of its mate, or the one who’d turned and fled before Gates shot it in the back.

He especially remembers the first alien he’d ever seen killed in person.

They were still at so-called boot camp when they’d dragged the reptilian beast out of some hole in the ground. Only one alien, they said, so only one person from the group would get the honors, and they selected a woman named Prosky, for being “top of her class.”

The truth of the matter was, Ortez had outperformed Prosky—had outperformed everyone—in just about everything. He’d posted times just ahead of Gates on the obstacle courses; he kept a spotless bunk; he was always on time; he’s beaten CQC instructors in fair fights. Everyone knew it, too.

They also knew that Ortez wasn’t chosen because he couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut and do as he was told.

Ortez being a “little shitlord” (to quote Gates) usually looked something like “complaining” (again, Gates) that “killing was too hard” (Gates again) and “making everyone else’s lives harder” (Gates _again_ ). When Sergeant Yang came to sort out the dispute between Gates and Ortez and Ortez had explained his case, Sergeant Yang had sighed and looked disappointed.

Then he’d told Ortez: “Killing is easy. You just don’t know it, yet.”

“Killing?” Ortez had echoed in disbelief. “ _Easy_?”

Gates had rolled his eyes, but Ortez hadn’t missed his smarmy, satisfied smirk. God, he hated Gates so much. (Actually, he still hates Gates.)

“Sure it does. Why not?” Yang had asked. “Practice makes permanent. Just follow your orders and you’ll be fine.”

“...Oh,” Ortez had said, while Gates looked meaningfully at Ortez. “Of course, sir.”

Right. Follow orders.

Or, later, Ortez being an “insubordinate little fuck” looked like Ortez asking his bunkmate about it two minutes before the lights turned off:

“Sympathy for the dinos?” Jameson had asked. “Christ, Sam, you must be crazy. 

“I’m not—” Ortez had stared at him in the dark. “I’m not crazy. Look at them. They have culture. They have family.”

“They’ve killed humans,” Jameson had said.

“So have other humans,” Ortez had replied.

Maybe he’d said it too seriously, or too low and threatening, or maybe the memory of Prosky holding a shotgun to a living creature’s face and pulling the trigger was still fresh in everyone’s minds, or maybe it was just because Jameson’s own father had been sliced in half by an Elite just three months ago, but Jameson had backed off exaggeratedly with his arms raised. “Okay, fine. Dinos are great. Dinos never did anything wrong.”

“That’s not what I said,” Ortez had protested.

“Whatever, man,” Jameson had said, and hunched his shoulders and turned away.

So when Prosky had chosen a shotgun for the execution of one snarling, drooling, snapping alien, Ortez had said nothing about it at the time, although it would never stop bugging him, all the way up to the field when he thought he could get away with pushing back against his captain’s orders. Ortez knew that there was nearly fifty men waiting to see a spectacle, to finally see an alien die in person, instead of broadcast on a TV screen. (One of the first times Ortez had really known what his younger brother had meant when he'd called the military a cult.)

The alien was dragged out like a sheep to slaughter. And as Prosky had loaded the shotgun barrel over the alien’s soft, vulnerable mouth, Ortez waited for his resolve to harden. Now, if ever, watching murder should be easy. Such an ugly, drooling, inhuman face so obviously hellbent on sinking its teeth into Prosky’s leg should make Ortez grow hatred in his heart.

But he waited, and waited, and waited, and nothing came to him: he stayed the same person, revolted, uncertain, unsteady in his convictions, with only doubt to stand upon, remembering that they’d pulled this alien out of a dirty hole where it’d seen neither light nor friend nor kindness in god knew how long.

When Prosky had raised the shotgun, Ortez had closed his eyes.

* * *

Now, when Ortez washes his hands in the hospital sinks, he avoids looking in the mirror, but he can’t avoid his own face forever. The X across the center of his face startles him every time. He knows he doesn’t expect to look in the mirror and see the face he used to have, as a bright-eyed recruit or a quiet high-schooler, but he was told, long ago, that he’d be on the front lines saving humanity. Isn’t that the face he’s supposed to see?

He looks at the X, and he sees the Locus helmet drawn across his own face. He sees the image of what the Sangheili must have seen, as they looked to his face and found neither eyes nor mouth nor humanity at all: only the blind, empty X. The last thing they’d ever seen. The X that Ortez would see, every day, out of armor or not, his kills engraved on his very skin. 

He always looks away because Ortez, despite the rumors, isn’t really that brave.


	4. Gates

The hospital, the very place designed to heal his myriad of minor injuries, is a battlefield all by itself, but Ortez is determined to survive until the redeployment forms go through.

The hallway is always crowded. Dozens of people brushing up against him, scratching his skin, right up against his fleshy, squishy, vulnerable organs. Ortez spends a lot of time wishing he was invisible, that he could drift through crowds like a ghost, feeling nothing, touching nothing, dissipating his own loneliness without ever making human contact.

He goes to the quietest corners of the hospital and counts down the days. He tries to read, but he can’t focus on the plot—sometimes he can’t focus on the words. He tries movies and videos, but the words slide in and out of his ears and the images dissolve to shapes and colors. He tries music, but he can only listen to it when backed into a corner with concrete, solid walls, and even then, he can’t put in both earbuds without feeling like something with claws is digging its way through the wall to seize him by the neck. (Delusions? Stockholm syndrome?)

Eventually, he becomes too tired for music, too. He feels like he hasn’t slept in weeks, but he can’t fall asleep. He gets access to sleep medication from Millstein, but Millstein won’t let him keep the bottle or up the dose. He sleeps in twenty-minute naps, scattered through endless acres of twenty-four hour cycles.

More than tired, he spends a lot of time being incredibly bored and displeased that everyone keeps expecting him to lie down and die.

He’d be perfectly fine if they’d let him out of this _fucking_ hospital.

* * *

He is bored and displeased and sitting his corner alone when he sees Gates for the first time since they escaped.

Gates, who still looks like heated-over garbage, is racing past Ortez’s hiding corner in his wheelchair at the high speed of zero-point-zero-two miles an hour. He’s dragging a portable IV stand behind him, finagling wheelchair wheels he obviously has no experience with, and scowling.

Gates glances off to his right. Does a double take. Stops altogether.

“You,” says Ortez.

“Would it kill you to have some courtesy to the person who saved your damn life?” says Gates, rolling his eyes. “Hello to you too, you big dramatic motherfucker.”

First off, Gates is _the_ most dramatic person in this military. Second off, Ortez has some thoughts about who precisely saved any lives, and it’s _not_ Gates.

But before he can say anything, they’re interrupted by a nurse striding down the hallway like she’s about to serve Gates some hands and an earful. Gates immediately puts up his hands. “It’s for therapy,” Gates says. His entire weasel face changes into earnesty, a sense of loss and being lost and hopefulness all the same. “Dr Hamid said that it might be good to come to terms with what happened to us. I swear I didn’t mean to go off alone, I just… wanted it to be private.”

The nurse’s entire body language changes on a dime: hesitant, exasperated, sympathetic. Ortez is going to strangle Gates. “You couldn’t have left a note? There was panic when we found your bed empty,” the nurse says.

“I mean, I can go back to my ward if it’s too much trouble for you...”

“No, Lord, damage is done already,” says the nurse. _And I’ve got better things to do,_ goes unsaid, but not unheard. “I’ll tell them you’re… with company. You’ve got a buzzer on your chair. Ring us if you need help. Keep him on the straight and narrow, young man,” she tells Ortez. “It’s not safe for him outside the building.”

Ortez, slowly, turns to face Gates with displeasure that borders on murderous, which ironically assures the nurse that he will, in fact, keep Gates on the straight and narrow.

She begins to turn, then whips back around. “You’ve got one hour, Gates, and then I expect you back.”

“You’re a saint,” says Gates. She gives him an terse smile and whisks away, and Gates’s earnest expression drops.

Oh, Ortez is really going to kill him now.

“Ugh,” he says to Ortez. “She won’t stop looking at me like I’m about to rip her throat open with my teeth. And like, not in a sex way. Can that be in a sex way? Okay, I’ve grossed myself out, I don’t want to know.”

“You lied to her,” says Ortez, with eyes narrowed to slits.

“No, I _convinced_ her.” Gates pauses, and chuckles to himself. “Actually, no, fuck it, I totally did. And I did it _so_ fucking well, let’s be honest with ourselves, I deserve a tiny Oscar. Hold your applause, please, I know you’re overwhelmed by my performance—”

“Stop lying,” snaps Ortez. And, specifically, stop using Ortez to do it. Gates _always_ does this.

“It was a tiny lie! A white lie! A _joke_ , Ortez, learn to take one. You see any other way to make these nurses give us anything? I can’t even take a shit without them being convinced I’ll sneak off and hang myself. Like I’d die in a port-a-potty, give me a break. Hamid’s got them convinced I’m hanging on by a thread.” Gates gives Ortez a huge eyeroll, like Ortez should be in on the joke.

“Did…” And Ortez hesitates, not sure if he wants an answer. “Did Dr Hamid ask you to see me?”

Gates hesitates too. Then his expression pinches into a rare moment of disgust, the closest he gets to seriousness, and he looks away. (Ortez never finds out what Gates did or didn’t say to Dr Hamid.)

“Sorry, I’m seeing your ugly mug entirely by unfortunate chance.” Gates gestures to his wheelchair. “You can make up the trauma your face is inflicting onto my retinas by making yourself useful. Push this piece of shit chair. I’ll hold the IV stand.”

Ortez crosses his arms. 

“Well, _you’re_ not holding the IV stand, I need the fucking thing to live and you’d probably break it,” says Gates.

“I’m not enabling you making the nurse’s job harder,” says Ortez.

Gates has the nerve to laugh at that. “I’d never. _You_ might. _I_ am just a simple man who wants some fresh air. I’ll be back before anyone notices, I just need everyone to shut up about overdosing and nooses and guns with one bullet for more than ten consecutive seconds.”

That... was fair. Ortez could understand that. “The orders were to stay inside the building,” Ortez protests.

“Oh, _now_ you want to follow orders? Like you ever gave a shit when Rachoff gave them.”

“I still don’t,” Ortez replies. “I just happen to agree that you should stay inside.”

Gates sighs. “Take me up to the roof, then.”

Ortez looks at him sharply.

“To _sit_ and smoke a cigarette, not to fucking _jump off_! Christ!” And Gates gathers his IV pole and his wheelchair and his blankets over his shrunken body in as much of a huff as Ortez has ever seen, and when Ortez moves closer, Gates snaps, “Don’t fucking _touch_ me! Don’t you dare!”

“Gates—”

“Like I’d drag myself across a war to this shitty hospital to _die_ ,” Gates yells back, and before Ortez can tell Gates exactly who dragged who to the quote-unquote shitty hospital, Gates wheels away down the hall, clutching his pole of IV drips tight in his bony hand, and doesn’t look back.

* * *

The next day, Gates goes into cardiac arrest.

The feat of traversing ten miles of active warzone with no food and minimal water, combined with later blood loss and pre-existing prolonged malnutrition, should have made the event unsurprising, but it still surprises just about everyone. Gates might have been deficient in potassium and had lost an insane amount of his blood, but they’d thought that he’d been out of the danger zone for sure.

The doctors say they revived him with defibrillators, but the day after, when Ortez peeks through the crack in the door as a nurse slips in, Ortez won’t ever forget the image he sees: Gates, feral in his hospital gown, clinging to his hospital bed railings by his ruined and half-bloody fingernails. Teeth bared, ribs taut, eyes sunken and grey. Determined to survive with half a dozen tubes through his gut, if only to prove those fuckers wrong.

Ortez knows nobody revived Gates. Gates revived himself out of sheer spite.

The next night, Ortez appears in Gates’s room. Gates cracks an eye open. “Like a fuckin’ ghost,” he rasps. “Told you to stay away.”

Ortez turns to go.

“Forget it,” Gates says. He sounds panicked. “Forget it. Never mind.”

Ortez stays.


	5. Favorites

Gates was always Captain Rachoff’s favorite.

It didn’t hurt that Gates was always the most willing to volunteer, although that wasn’t why. It didn’t hurt that Gates was never shy about getting blood on his hands, in a way that was less bloodthirsty and more entirely necessary for wartime, although that wasn’t why either. It also didn’t hurt that he acquired friends easily, but that wasn’t why, either.

Gates was Rachoff’s favorite because there is nobody on this earth who objects to hearing what they want to hear, and Gates had the knack for knowing exactly what that was.

Why not? Captain Rachoff had decisions to make, orders to give, judgment to deliver, lives to balance. At the end of the day, Gates could put the captain’s mind at rest: _"We weren’t in a position to take prisoners." "The other route would have been too slow." "Those two were slowing us down." "You made the right call."_

Ortez, of course, was the opposite: constantly asking questions, pointing out in ten words or less their inefficiencies and deficiencies and a better plan of action, a stickler for rules except when he didn’t agree with them. _“Why that position? There’s a better position half a mile away.” “We actually do have the time to pull that maneuver off.” “Not burying the dead gives away our positions.” “Why a SAW?” “But if we came around from the side—” “Captain Rachoff, won’t altitude affect functioning?” “Sir, do we have to kill it?”_

And Rachoff’s personal favorite when it came to Ortez’s bullshit: _“Regulations require a minimum of two armor software check-ups per month,”_ and _“Just because regulation said so, I don’t see why I should shave off my hair”_ both coming out of Ortez’s mouth within the _same five minutes._

Nobody wants doubt on a battlefield. Doubt, one way or another, gets you killed.

“It’s about fucking time he got fed up with you,” Gates had said once, after Rachoff had finally lost his temper with Ortez and yelled at him over objecting to killing an alien. ( _In this war, you’re nothing more than a suit of armor and a gun_ , words that Ortez will remember for a long, long time.) “Could you be  _any_ more of an insufferable know-it-all? Going around thinking you know better than everyone else.”

“That’s because I do,” Ortez had replied.

Gates had thrown up his hands, laughing derisively. “Wow! When I said 'could you be any more of a know-it-all', that  _wasn't_ a challenge! Man, color me _shocked_  Rachoff didn’t lose his temper sooner!” 

Ortez had gritted his teeth and practically growled with irritation. 

“Oh, don't give me that. You and I both know it's been a long time coming," Gates had said. "You deserved to get chewed out.”

(Ortez doesn’t know if that’s true or not, anymore.)

Ortez _does_ know why he hates Gates. Isn’t it obvious? He feeds off other people like a leech, usually with a fake smile and friendliness you couldn’t trust. And once he acquires enough social power, he always jumps to the worst solution, which usually involves blood. Ortez will never forget his memory of Gates standing over a wounded Sangheili, grinning as the Elite dragged itself desperately towards its weapon, savoring its despair, breathing in the moments before Gates crushed a wounded soldier under his boot like the fragrance from a good wine. If Ortez ever tells Gates to hurry up and stop messing around, it's only because "messing around" with Gates usually involves knives and a lot of screaming.

And people have the _nerve_ to ask Ortez why he doesn’t like Gates. 

Gates, every time, simple and vicious: _I say we blow its brains out._

Ortez, every time, biting and criticizing: _That’s your solution to everything._

If Ortez didn’t know better, he’d think they’d both dragged each other to safety because the first one to die would lose the argument, and god forbid Gates admit to being _wrong_.

* * *

When Gates’s nurses let him out of his ward again, he comes to find Ortez in the corner where Ortez goes to feel less raw, or at least feel less like every human contact is going to kill him either from fear of himself or fear of assault or just being too tired to fend off the way they look at him like he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, ready to devour first everyone around him and then himself. That is, Gates comes to find Ortez in the corner where Ortez _specifically goes to be alone_ , and then Gates sets up his IV pole like he’s setting up camp and doesn’t leave.

“Don’t bet on redeployment papers, Ortez,” Gates says, by way of hello. “They expect us to crumple under half a ton of PTSD and then shoot ourselves. 

“Stop it,” says Ortez. He knows what he’s doing: assuming the worst because he’s just as afraid of being turned down for renewed service as Ortez is. Fear on Gates always came out sharp-toothed and sneering.

“No, seriously. It’s cheaper to discharge us than do something about us. Doesn’t help that they don’t want survivors from that bloodbath. Bureaucracy. Politics. Money money money. Fucking typical of this piece of shit army.”

Gates always had the tendency to find the worst possible scenario reassuring in its finality. Fucking _insufferable_. Ortez is too tired for another one of Gates’s self-involved diatribes about the army. “Go away,” Ortez snaps.

“Why, so you can sit here and feel sorry for yourself?” Gates asks. “So the nurse can bug you about therapy? So Hamid can look at you like you’re going to snap and tear her organs out?”

He says it in the same scornful, joking tone of voice he always uses when he’s exaggerating, but he isn’t. And Gates knows he isn’t. And the reason Gates knows it’s not an exaggeration is because that’s how the nurse look at Gates, too. 

Gates and Ortez, the famed bitter rivals in their career-long pedagogical differences. Gates and Ortez, the last of their squad. Gates and Ortez, the only two who’d ever seen what the other had, the only two who knew what the other had gone through. The only two who’d been there.

Gates sits with _his_ back to the wall, and watches every nurse go by like they’re out to get him, and wears an inch of exhausted purple under his eyes.

Ortez might not like him, but Gates understands. Gates _gets_ it, in the way that no other soldier in this hospital can, because Gates had been _there_ when it happened. 

(Ortez can’t be crazy if Gates can understand.)

Ortez doesn’t ask Gates to leave. 

Even if Gates _is_ insufferable.


	6. Once

Eventually, during the sixth or seventh hour of sporadic conversation, nurses poking their head in to check that Gates hadn’t collapsed, and Ortez staring at a blank tablet, he hears Gates mumble: “She’ll let us go back to service.”

Ortez doesn’t move. “Dr Hamid?”

“Uh, duh? Who else?” says Gates.

Literally any one of the hundreds of women in this hospital, is who else. Ortez feels his own face acquiring the pissed-off expression that usually follows Gates saying something that he knows is blatantly false. “What makes you say that?” he says instead.

“A feeling,” says Gates. Then, with exaggerated huffing and puffing and affronted eye-rolling, he says: “She seems nice.”

Ortez nearly closes his eyes. _Nice_ , as a concept, after the fire and rain and blood and screaming and murder and fear. _Nice_. It seems ridiculous.

But surely being a good person is a real thing that still exists, Ortez thinks. He knows, objectively, that the whole world didn’t change when they came back from the front lines. If nice people existed before, then nice people exist now.

He really wants, from the depths of his murky, bottomless gut, for a thing like “nice” to exist.

“She does,” Ortez says.

Gates scoffs, like it'd been Ortez's suggestion in the first place. Gates doesn’t bring it up again.


	7. Denied

_We regret to inform you that your request for deployment has been deferred indefinitely, due to concerns from our psychological battery. At this time, we’d like to offer an honorable discharge—_

Ortez marches right up to Dr Hamid’s office, which immediately terrifies her because he’s half a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier and _very unhappy_ . “What is this?” he demands. “The symptoms were _mild_. I’m still fit for service. There’s _nothing_ wrong with me.”

“Nobody said there’s anything wrong with you,” Dr Hamid says, quite bravely. “The military values your service. We’re trying to serve you by allowing you to go home to sort through what is or isn’t real—" 

“I’m _not. Crazy_ ,” Ortez hisses.

Dr Hamid looks at him with pitying eyes, and he hears her voice in his head: _Reality is not as you know it. Heavy delusions of nonexistent threats. That’s your delusion lying to you. Just follow your orders and you’ll be fine. Christ, Sam, you must be crazy._

“Ortez!” Gates snaps.

He whips around. There’s Gates, lounging in his wheelchair like it’s a throne, sneering as usual. “Lay off her,” he orders, like he has any right to tell Ortez what to do. Then he laughs, a little self-deprecating chuckle, like he’s chastising himself for having ever thought this could have turned out any other way but heartbreak. “It’s not like it’s anything personal, Ortez.”

“Absolutely not personal,” says Dr Hamid. “That would never and should never be the conclusion drawn from professional therapy wo—”

“Can it, bitch,” snaps Gates. “Nobody cares about your dumb job.”

Ortez looks back at Dr Hamid. He knows it _looks_ like he meant to hit her, but he hadn’t, he promises, he’s not a violent person at heart. (Or is he? What does he know? Maybe the war made him that way, too.) And maybe it _feels_ personal, like she in particular has ruined the one career he had going for him, the one career he really thought he could believe in to make a difference and serve humankind, but again—what does he know? There’s no bombs in this building; aliens are monstrous and cruel; reality is not as you know it.

He can’t trust his own eyes.

He can’t trust himself.

For the first time in his life, Ortez leans on Gates’s judgment of reality. He steps away from Dr Hamid.

* * *

Ortez never returns to Dr Hamid’s office. The nurses practically beg him to. Ortez sits in silence, thoughts quiet, and doesn’t hear them at all.

“What could they know?” Gates declares. “They weren’t there.”

Ortez glares at the nurses as they walk by and, secretly, agrees.

* * *

Three weeks later, the two last survivors of the worst battle of the Great War slip quietly out of the UNSC’s grasp.


	8. Discharged

He's got no idea where Gates goes when they're discharged. They never managed to say goodbye, but Ortez isn't so ridiculous as to think one was necessary—not with a person like Gates. Ortez requests not to be taken back to his home and fails to specify where else he'd like to go, so he's dumped alone on the nearest habitable planet. 

Actually, calling Yul-Banuk _habitable_ is generous. Certainly, Yul-Banuk has cities, towers, skyscrapers, nightclubs, paved roads and sidewalks. But there’s only so much damage from the war that a government can fix all at once, especially since the war is still in its last and most hectic months. Hell, there’s entire planets forgotten by the UNSC, if only because the UNSC doesn’t have the manpower and energy to keep track of _every_ planet with a colony that didn’t get—well, either massacred or glassed. Some places in Yul-Banuk are ruined beyond recognition.

That’s not what makes Yul-Banuk nearly uninhabitable. Yul-Banuk doesn’t have enough government at all, let alone law enforcement. And the gang communities that spring up in the power vacuum are either aggressively peaceful or just… aggressive.

With that sort of playing field, Ortez has an even better guesstimate of the challenge that veterans returning from war face. Those who’d joined right out of high school (which is Ortez’s case) are usually left as a twenty-something without a home, an education, a career, a resume, and an economy without a lot of options.

But he’s not going to let the challenge destroy him. By god, he’s going to make it through.

He teaches himself how to write a cover letter. He holes up in a motel and shops for apartments on a new credit card. He scours job listings and writes down all the ones he doesn’t think he’ll hate. He avoids going outside, and avoids crowds. (Is he going to go work as a waiter in a restaurant? As if he could. How long would it take before he attacks some diner because he’s convinced everyone’s out to shove a knife in his gut?) Could he last as a PA? Should he join the nearly-nonexistent police force?

He tries to remember how to keep a home, even if he’s still living in a motel, but by the end of the first month, there’s only a spoiled carton of eggs in the fridge, a microwavable plate still in the microwave, and no pans or pots. Ortez, frankly, has forgotten how to cook, or forgotten how to enjoy cooking, doesn’t even remember the taste of the spices his family used to use. There’s a landline that doesn’t work on a coffee table. All his clothes are folded, neat, laundered. The bathroom is spotless. The medicine cabinet contains a pistol and no other medicine. He outfits his room with not just one but _two_ white noise generators, but only uses them when he's certain that there's nobody standing just outside his door, ready to break and enter the instant he's unaware. (The problem is that he's  _always_ certain there's someone outside his door and he's not sure why.)

He receives an email from a therapist who’s been assigned to him, and he deletes it.

He receives an email from his father, who informs him that the anniversary of his mother’s death is soon, and that he’s welcome home, and he would love to see his boy. Ortez pretends not to see it. He doesn’t know what his father really wants, but it probably has something to do with skeeving off his severance pay to feed his bad habits.

He receives an email that his younger brother has gone MIA on the battlefield.

After that, he stops checking his email very often.


	9. Job

He gets an interview for a position as a waiter in a bar—not a nightclub, per se, but a bar with its fair share of nighthawks and rowdy customers. It wasn’t even remotely a job he wanted. It’s still a job.

At the interview, the manager takes one look at him and tells him to lurk behind the bar and look menacing. The official job is washing dishes and cleaning tables, which Ortez decides he will actually do, and well. The bar is as clean as bars come. Ortez will enjoy making it cleaner. Ortez doesn’t even say a full sentence before he’s hired.

Just as well. None of the other interviewers wanted to hire him as soon as he opened his mouth.

It’s a good deal upon the nine o’clock crowd hits, when suddenly the place is loud, and the exit is jammed full of human bodies. A waitress puts on Broadway tunes with a brassy, blaring soundtrack. People crowd in; there’s a line blocking the windows; laughter and squirming bodies; dark; the sound of glass and knives; waiters sliding behind the bar every second, brushing Ortez’s skin; a holo of a sports event is playing and people are screaming.

“Sam! Table four!” the bartender yells.

Ortez takes one look at table four, littered with blades and other cutlery, and walks out.

* * *

 

Not _out_ out. He doesn’t quit his job.

He’s not allowing himself to.

He spends time pacing just outside the back of the bar. He’s got to go back in, particularly before anyone notices. He’s done things he didn’t want to do before and now is no different; Ortez will be _actually_ homeless if he can’t secure a steady source of funds outside of what the UNSC gives him. 

He just has to wait for the world to stop feeling so small and scratchy.

He just has to wait for the monster he _knows_ is behind him, waiting to drag him into the dark, to disappear. (Delusions. Stockholm syndrome.)

It’s not a matter of if he can do it. He _has_ to keep a job. He must. Failing to keep a job is a trademark of every vet who failed to make the transition back to civilian life, and that _won’t_ be him. It _can’t._ ( _It’s going to be,_ some voice in his head says.)

Vaguely, Ortez wishes he could make a career out of being a sniper, because it was always what he did best and right now, more than anything, he can’t possibly imagine happiness or peacefulness or being a civilian (whatever that means) as a real thing that could happen to him; but he _can_ imagine the conviction he feels of lining up a shot he knows he’ll make. And if he can’t imagine happiness, he wishes he could at least have  _that._

But it’s only a vague wish in the face of what he knows is and isn’t realistic, before he gathers himself up, takes a deep breath, and goes back to clean table four.


	10. Faces

As if the bar weren’t enough of a film noir cliche, Ortez’s first shift on the infamously-quiet Monday night brings in some punk with a face-scrambler. 

Face-scramblers work like voice-coders: they make your voice impossible to recognize, except face-scramblers are expensive, shady, and a pain on the retinas. The whole point of them is that they prevent the face from being comprehensible to a human face or camera lens, and it hurts to look at. Ortez hates them, generally speaking, and the only good thing about them is that they’re rare and a sure sign of who’s got bad business.

Scrambled Face must have come in before with the same outfit or something, because the two waiters on duty tense up and flee to the manager’s office. The bartender keeps his eyes down when the man sits down at the bar.

“We don’t want any trouble,” says the bartender, like an even bigger film noir cliche.

Oh, right. Taking care of trouble is Ortez’s other job. Ortez puts the plate in the sink and goes to dry out his hands. Hard to intimidate a man with a fist full of soap.

“Nah, no trouble today,” says Scrambled Face. “Just got rid of the trouble. Here to grab a quick drink. Maybe a sandwich. Check in, see how you’re all doing.”

The bartender seems uneasy, like he wants to refuse but can’t for some reason. “You’ve said that before.”

Ortez still has the towel in his hands when he speaks up: “James, is this man trouble?”

Scrambled Face’s blurred, blotchy visage turns towards Ortez. “New face? I don’t think we’ve met.”

“I was hired to deal with trouble,” Ortez says.

The bartender looks even more nervous, somehow, which is the opposite of what Ortez is supposed to be here for. “It’s—fine. We know him. Sam,” he says, in a low voice, “leave this guy alone.” 

“He’s wearing a face-scrambler,” Ortez says at normal volume, looking straight at the man. “Trouble wears those.”

“This guy isn’t someone to mess with—”

“Moreso that he should leave,” says Ortez. The scrambled face doesn’t look away. Ortez can’t see the eyes through the interference, but he has a feeling that they’re looking right at him. 

The bartender leans in and whispers, “He _kills_ people for a living, Sam.”

“Uh-huh,” says Ortez, who’d killed entire squadrons of aliens for a living not two months ago. 

“James, you gotta stop telling people that,” says Scrambled Face. He sounds genuinely pissed about that, though it’s not like Ortez can corroborate the emotion on his face. “I just dig up dirt on crooks and take them to the police. You’ve nothing to be afraid of if you’ve done nothing wrong.”

The bartender looks back at Ortez, as if expecting Ortez to _finally_ back down. Ortez only crosses his arms. “Then go ahead. I’m not hiding,” says Ortez. “All the actions I’m guilty of are legal and organized by the UNSC.”

“Sounds like you were a good soldier,” says Scrambled Face.

“I was," Ortez replies.

“Nice to meet you, Sam,” says Scrambled Face. “I’m Siris.” At the sound of the name, the bar goes quieter.

“I can’t pronounce that,” Ortez says. “Leave.”

Scrambled Face barks a laugh. It’s surprisingly genuine—not mocking at all. “Fair enough. Later, James. Later, Sam,” says Scrambled Face with a nod and hops off the barstool.

Ortez nods. If nothing else, Scrambled Face sounded like an okay guy.

Scrambled Face waves as he disappears out the door.

“Are you crazy?” the bartender hisses. “You can’t tell a man like Siris to leave—”

Ortez spins around so fast that the bartender goes quiet. “I,” Ortez says, very clearly, “am not _crazy_.”

The look the bartender gives him tells Ortez that he hadn’t meant his comment literally until Ortez’s reaction. “You—I—I didn’t mean it like that,” he says. “I’m just saying, sometimes weird things come up on a guy’s record, and there’s no shame in that, everyone’s got a right to hide from the things they’ve done.”

Ortez gives him a long, silent look until the bartender stops talking. Eventually, the bartender mutters, “Right,” and looks down. Ortez goes back to the sink. They do not speak again that day.

* * *

At eleven o’clock the next night, a man sets up camp at the bar and introduces himself to Ortez as Mason Wu.


	11. Mason

Ortez is theoretically supposed to be making friends. Isn’t that what they always say about transitioning to civilian life? Establish civilian social network, reconnect with your family, reconnect with your old friends? Ortez’s family is either dead, MIA, or his father. Ortez’s high school friends aren’t even on the planet of Yul-Banuk. 

After the third time Mason comes by the bar, Ortez’s list of contacts is one name long: Mason Wu. 

Ortez mostly wants to be left alone, but if there’s anyone whose company he doesn’t mind, it’s Mason’s. It’s actually quite agreeable to everyone: the bartender can actually do his job, Ortez stands there looking menacing and washing dishes, Mason watches and occasionally helps in amiable, companionable silence. Mason doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t ask about Ortez’s face scar, he doesn’t ask when Ortez steps out to the back alley to stare off into space, he doesn’t ask for anything Ortez doesn’t volunteer.

He assumes this is because Mason has his own issues he doesn’t want to talk about.

Ortez also spends two weeks convinced that Mason is a porn director.

Mason doesn’t talk about his job, except that it’s all he talks about: how he has a skill set, Sam, and he’s so sure that he could put it to better use. He’s trained his whole life for this, and he’s betraying his morals every time he goes to work. I’m actively making the world worse, Mason says, two weeks into their acquaintanceship.

“Doing…?” Ortez prompts, but Mason only shakes his head.

Case in point: trained to be a film director, wound up filming illegal, sexist porn. A tragic film noir cliche coming to complain about his job.

Mason doesn’t appear to have many friends (he mentions one making a dubious living as a card shark) and has a prosthetic cyborg leg that he shows Ortez once for fun. Mason isn’t a veteran, and it comes as a surprise to Ortez, because there’s something from Mason that rings familiar—a sense of disconnect, drifting oddly unmoored from the rest of the real plane.

It’s for this reason that Ortez takes Mason seriously when he says, “Things could be better than this.”

It’s early in the day for Mason to show up. It’s around three in the afternoon, actually, just after the lunch rush and before the “dinner rush” (which is mostly people looking to get ahead on the night drinking). Ortez is on his thirsty-minute “lunch” break, but that largely amounts to him standing in the alley outside the bar’s back door and cleaning up litter just to have something to do with his hands. He doesn’t mind Mason joining such a pointless break at all. 

“Better how,” Ortez asks.

“Well, most people dream of having a family and a job that means something. I’m not hugely original, Sam,” Mason says, with a humorless grin. “If I had a choice—if I could have anything in the world—I’d love to have a job that’s worth doing, and then go home to a family I care about. Actually doing good things instead of—y’know.” Mason’s face quirks into such a flat stare that Ortez is very sure that his next words are the remnant of some other argument with some other person: “You _shouldn’t_ have to sell everyone else out just to survive and make a living wage.”

“Hm,” says Ortez. He has very little opinion on economics and the supposed ‘alienation of workers’. He throws a plastic bag full of bottle pieces into a dumpster and slams it closed, then comes to sit next to Mason on the curb.

“It’s giving up hope prematurely,” says Mason, as if talking to himself, or maybe this other person he’s had this argument with. “I don’t _have_ to die or throw myself under the bus just to manage some good deeds. I can have my cake and eat it too.”

“Eat your cake and have it too,” Ortez corrects.

Mason snorts. “Is that the way it’s supposed to go?”

English is a stupid language, in Ortez’s opinion. None of the sentences work the way they’re supposed to. None of the words means the things they’re supposed to. He changes the subject instead: “‘Doing good’ is too broad a plan,” Ortez tells Mason. “You’d be better off making a family, if you want fulfillment. Order of operations is clearer.” (Namely speaking: Marry person, make kids, receive college debt.)

Mason’s eyes slide off to the left. “I’m not exactly worried about the family piece right now. It’s work that I’m thinking about.”

“One thing at a time,” Ortez says. “Work often interferes with family. Choose one thing.”

“Well, hopefully when that time comes,” Mason says, “I can eat that cake and have it too.”

Ortez feels his face crack half a smile. It feels wrong.

“Define your objective,” he says. “Work backwards from the goal.” (Instead of sitting here and complaining to Ortez.) “What good do you want to do?”

Mason leans back on the sidewalk curb. “Actually, I’ve got kind of a specific skill set. It might be better to start from what’s possible with what I can do.”

Good problem-solving. Ortez likes that. “Repurposing what you’re good at, then.”

“Exactly,” says Mason, and then, with a rather sardonic edge to his voice: “After all, doing good can be the same thing as getting rid of bad people, right?”

Ortez gives Mason a sidelong look.

Despite the audible tongue in cheek, Mason has not a hint of irony in his face.

Ortez suspects that Mason isn’t a director after all.


	12. Used

Some four weeks into their work-shift-hours friendship, Mason says, “Say, Sam, what time do you get off work?”

It finally hits Ortez, halfway through divvying up a receipt for table two, that Ortez has been a fucking idiot, and if Gates were here, he’d be howling on the damn floor because this _exact same thing_ happened to him in Basic with a nice woman named Peltier. (She was later relieved of one leg above the knee and died of infection.) All the same signs were there: person walks in, has never met Ortez before, strikes up a conversation with the dishwasher behind the bar instead of the bartender, who is the obvious conversational partner. Christ, Ortez thinks, it’s been staring him in the face and he was too blind to see it. _Again_.

Ortez ducks his head. Finishes divvying up the receipt instead, ignores the waiter waiting for the receipt, ignores Mason, goes to take the check to the table himself. But when he gets back to the bar, there’s not much else to clean, considering Ortez’s militant (ha) management of every disinfectant, towel, and surface area. Ortez was always useless without a concrete, physical problem to solve.

Sensing his suddenly uneasiness, Mason leans back, like he could help by giving Ortez space. It’s particularly worrying because not only does it actually help, but Ortez doesn’t know how Mason picked it up. 

“Sam?” Mason asks.

“Um,” is the first thing Ortez says.

“Should I tell James you went to the bathroom?” Mason offers. He’s referring to Ortez going outside to the back of the bar to stare into space and get his ridiculousness under control. Ortez shakes his head.

“About when I end work,” he says, and then stops. Oh, hell, he can’t do this. Not here, in this public space. He’s on the _clock._

“You can go,” the bartender pipes up. Mason brightens.

“It’s fine,” Ortez says.

“No, really, you can go,” says the bartender. “There’s hardly a huge crowd coming in at two in the morning. Go have fun with your friend. 

“Aw, thanks, James,” says Mason.

The bartender waggles his eyebrows, then makes a shooing motion. Ortez feels his heart sink.

Ortez changes out of his polo shirt with the vague hope that Mason will have disappeared, but of course he hasn’t, and now he’s on a semi-deserted city street in the middle of the night with a man who’s asking him if he’d “rather walk or go in my car, either way, whichever you prefer—” and Ortez feels like a faker in his own skin. He doesn’t belong in Yul-Banuk and he doesn’t belong in these clothes and he doesn’t belong with this nice man with the cute smile. It’s all wrong. It’s _dishonest_. Mason has no idea who Ortez is, can’t _ever_ know because he wasn’t there, didn’t see what Ortez did with his own two eyes. Ortez could tell him in vivid detail and it wouldn’t ever be enough because he just _wasn’t there_.

No matter what Ortez tells him, he will never be the person Mason thinks he is. Ortez will always, so long as he’s in civilian clothes, be an imposter, dishonest through his very actions. 

And Ortez _hates_ being dishonest.

“Mason,” Ortez begins. Clears his throat. He’s always been so, so bad at this. He doesn’t want his one solid civilian friend to disappear, but he’s beginning to realize that this may be an inevitability he should brace for.

“I’m a veteran,” Ortez says.

Mason looks at him oddly. “Yes?”

Mason isn’t getting it. “Events in my life are… unstable,” Ortez tries again.

“Yeah, I’d bet,” says Mason.

No, he’s still not getting it. “I’m… flattered,” says Ortez, “but I… don’t believe I’m interested in a relationship at the current—”

Mason chokes. “Wait, wait, no no no—”

“It’s fine,” Ortez insists. “It’s nothing to do with you. If I were more able, I’d be—" 

“I’m married!” Mason says, laughing. “Sam, I’m not hitting on you, I promise.”

“Oh,” says Ortez. Then, suspiciously: “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, well, I can see where you got that impression,” says Mason, amused. Ortez looks pointedly at Mason’s bare ring finger, which Mason catches, and he pulls a ring out of his pants pocket. “See?” says Mason, slipping it on. There’s no tan line on his finger, although that counts for little considering Mason’s complexion and Yul-Banuk’s cloudy weather. 

“Ah, don’t…” Mason twists the ring on his finger, then takes it off again, slipping it into the same pocket. “Don’t go spreading that around, though. You don’t know who might hear that you’ve got people you care about. 

Ortez looks between Mason’s ring finger, the pants pocket where Mason has hidden his ring, and Mason’s face. “You came to the bar to talk to _me_ ,” says Ortez. “Me specifically.”

Mason doesn’t even look guilty. 

“I don’t understand,” says Ortez. 

“Mason glances behind them at the door to the bar. “Can I drive you home? Which sounds like a pick-up line, but my car isn’t a little more private.”

Ortez tracks his gaze. He doesn’t understand, but he gets the feeling that he’s about to if he gets in the car. So he does. Hasn’t got anything to lose, anyway. 

* * *

They plug the address to Ortez’s new apartment in, and Mason steers the car into the empty streets. “Finally got a place, or is this another couchsurfing stop?” Mason says.

“Monthly lease. Signed yesterday.”

“Not yearly?”

Ortez shrugs. He can’t shake the feeling that this city is temporary measures at best.

Mason stops for a red light at a deserted intersection. “Sam, you know my leg is fake, right?”

Ortez gives them a cursory glance. “So?”

“I was a martial artist born and bred,” he says. “Primarily taekwondo. When I lost my leg, I got kicked out of the dojang that raised me. And I know that’s nothing like what getting discharged is like, but I’m saying that once, I was out of work in my own profession too, and sometimes I wound up doing shady things to get by.”

The light goes green. The car moves forward. Ortez has no idea what any of this has to do with him. He stays silent.

“All I’m saying,” says Mason, “is that you’re a good guy. If you wanna quit working for the mafia, then I—”

“The what,” says Ortez.

“What,” says Mason. 

“I’m not—working for the _mafia_ ,” says Ortez. “I’m a bouncer at a family-owned bar. I’ve seen the owner. Ruben Lozano is a perfectly—”

Mason stomps on the brakes. The car screeches to a halt.

“You _met_ Ruben Lozano?!” Mason demands. 

Ortez is beginning to think he’s missed something.

Ruben Lozano, Mason fills him in, is the head of one of the most tightly-knit mafias in the city. Not the largest, by far, but certainly not without power; their strength lay not in numbers or manpower but in how dedicated they were to each other. They participated in drug- and sex-trafficking, but their specialties were in their fronts: setting up restaurants, nightclubs, bars, brothels, coffee shops, and (oddly) community libraries as the tax front to their illegal activity. Ruben Lozano did well because their legal businesses were, ironically, incredibly lucrative in and of themselves, although he was certainly making a fortune enough for ten men off the illegal end of it, too.

“Everyone knows that there’s vets in this city, and that includes Lozano,” says Mason, shaking his head. His hands squeeze on the steering wheel. “Vets are capable, strong, out of money, and looking for physical jobs. UNSC dumps them in Yul-Banuk, they end up as a bouncer in Lozano’s club. And if they like you enough, and if they think you’d be into it, they upgrade you to full-time mafia goon.”

Ortez is absolutely still.

“Man, Sam, I thought you knew about that. I was going to ask what a good guy like you was doing working for Lozano,” Mason says, sounding sincere about it, too. “I’m sorry. Christ. I really thought you knew, I would’ve, I don’t know, pulled the punch or something—”

“It’s fine,” says Ortez. 

He tries to unclench his fists. He can’t.

Mason pulls up on to the curb besides Ortez’s new apartment, and Ortez reaches for the door. “Sam, wait,” says Mason.

Ortez shakes his head.

“No, seriously, wait. Calm down—”

Ortez spits: “I was _used_.”

He’s shaking now, and he’s really quite sorry that Mason has to be in a closed, cramped car with him right now, because he knows it makes other people nervous when he’s like this but he can’t stop himself and he can’t stop his voice from shuddering, halting, jerking like some old machine desperate to work: “I signed up to do good things, Mason. I signed up to make some part of the world better. And they had some other—agenda—some other plan, they took my hands and used them—”

And he shoves the car door open, scrambles out into the dark, and marches away to his apartment building before Mason can say anything else.


	13. Fight

Ortez amasses a small portfolio on the Lozanos overnight.

Largely speaking, Mason is proven true on every count. What Ortez needs to know is what other establishments Lozano owns, and how to avoid them. (And also every other establishment on this entire planet that’s criminally owned, for good measure. Ortez has always been a thorough and methodical person.)

Ortez submits a two week notice the next day. He doesn’t lose his temper. He doesn’t lash out. He doesn’t get into a fight with anyone. He applies to leave and applies to new jobs, goes to work for two weeks, fills out his paperwork and does not respond to his manager’s disappointed glare. 

* * *

Don’t get him wrong: Ortez isn’t under any delusions that he’s some kind of moral angel. He was a soldier. He followed orders. He killed people.

It is for this reason that in the time between quitting his job and finding a new one, Ortez has nothing to do but sit in his apartment and think, oddly enough, about how he shouldn’t have quit the job at all. 

What right does he have to turn down a method of living? What right does he have to turn up his nose to a group of people who would pay him enough to survive? Hadn’t he and Gates, arms both dragging and clinging to each other, agreed to everything and anything to survive? Hadn’t Ortez _actually_ done everything, _anything_ to pull himself from the warzone to safety? No price was too high. No action was too low. Ortez would have eaten corpses of Sangheili if he hadn’t known that the ones they’d found were infected and already rotting. Survival above all else. ( _It is an undeniable and fundamental quality of man that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable_ —or so some people say.)

There’s been a few others held in the Sangheili camp alongside Ortez. One of them had lasted long enough to see Ortez’s escape. Her body was so blasted with experimental radiation and mutations and infections that even her jailers were nervous to be near her; she was contagious, radioactive, dying, too weak to string two coherent sentences together.

She’d begged Ortez and Gates to take her with them.

But practically speaking her body was only good for warding off Sangheili. Elaborate crowd control. Gates had pushed her up against a doorway with a stick, and the dinos had stayed away for hours. She’d wept bitterly when they refused to bring her but did not protest. ( _“I’d rather have died than feed my mate to the dinos,”_ Choi had said.)

They’d done the worst and accepted it as what they had to do to survive, held it to be true that the necessities of survival held them above moral contempt—and now Ortez had the _nerve_ to look down on a perfectly serviceable job out of some sense of superiority? To start having morals now, after all that, was far too little, far too late.

 _There goes Ortez,_ Gates would have said, _thinking he knows better than everyone else._

* * *

He doesn’t go back to the bar, though.


	14. Visionary

Three days later, there’s a knock on Ortez’s apartment door.

Before Ortez can go for the gun in the medicine cabinet, Mason’s voice shouts “It’s me!” and Orte scowls at himself in the bathroom mirror. He’s rapidly reaching the point of irritation with himself and his own irrationality. What if the knock had been a salesman? A door-to-door evangelist? Was he just going to shoot them the second he sees an unfamiliar face, like some kind of monster?

Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t exactly know what Mason wants, either. Ortez takes the gun from the medicine cabinet and tucks it into his waistband.

He peeks through the eyehole and cracks the door open, keeping the deadbolt in. Mason raises his hands. “Nobody else here. I just heard you quit your job.”

Ortez squints. “What about it?”

“I wanted to see if you were okay. Quitting a job isn’t some small thing, is it?”

Ortez doesn’t move.

“I also,” says Mason, “might have a job offer for you.”

Ortez considers this. To be honest, he would have believed Mason if he’d only come to see if Ortez was okay, but he appreciates Mason’s honesty. He opens the door. Steps aside to let Mason in.

When Mason steps in and Ortez closes and deadbolts the door behind him, Ortez catches Mason looking at the pistol in Ortez’s waistband. Ortez considers that Mason is now alone in the room with a large armed man trained in combat, and this man just deadbolted and locked the door. Before Ortez can try and defend himself, Mason says, “Are you worried someone’s going to break and enter?”

“No,” says Ortez, which is the logical response, just as his hindbrain says YES in large neon colors. Ortez scowls deeper. His irritation with himself grows. “That would be ridiculous,” he says sternly, half to himself.

Ortez doesn’t put the gun back in the medicine cabinet, though. Mason also doesn’t ask him to.

“I didn’t get a real chance to apologize for that mess the other night,” Mason says. Ortez walks past him to the main room, where there’s only a bed and an office chair in front of a small desk. Ortez gestures for Mason to have the bed. The room isn’t exactly constructed for the presence of multiple people, and it shows, glaringly obvious in a way that Ortez had never been self-conscious about before.

Mason does sit on the bed and doesn’t stare at the sparse furniture. “I didn’t mean to say that you should up and quit your job on the spot like that, or imply that you should. I know you’re in a rough spot right now.”

Ortez sits in the office chair and crosses his arms. Some distant hard-wired memory tells Ortez that he’s not being a great host, and that he should offer Mason something to drink, at the very least. “You didn’t imply that,” he says, sullenly. “You did nothing wrong. I chose to quit." 

“Do you know what you’re going to do next?” Mason asks.

“No.” Ortez pauses. “But I know I’m not working for criminals.”

Something very fond flashes over Mason’s face. “Did I tell you that I work as a bodyguard?” 

Ortez’s flick to Mason. He slowly raises his eyebrows.

“I’m not really supposed to say that because I’m supposed to protect my clients’ privacy, but also my clients aren’t exactly good people. Not anymore. They started off that way, but it tends to be that the people with the most money in this city are also people with the least amount of morals, and those are the kinds of people in the market for a bodyguard.”

Mason leans forward. His face is serious and earnest, like instead of confiding in a secret, he’s asking for the best seriousness and earnestness that Ortez can give. “I wanna actually do something good in this world, but I’m not gonna do that by protecting the hide of low-level embezzlers, and the only thing I’m good at is combat. I can’t exactly do a whole lot else.”

“Where is this going,” Ortez says.

“Sam," says Mason, "have you considered bounty hunting?”

At that, Ortez snorts. “I don’t intend on being homeless.”

“Yes, I know, it’s not usually a profession you can make a living as,” says Mason. “The chances you make it big are slim. There’s no guarantee.” Mason holds up one hand, as if to physically stop Ortez’s train of thought. “What if _multiple_ people got together and pooled resources? Multiple people on a job enables bigger jobs, bigger pay, paycheck split between the people involved and some left over for the equipment cost. Equipment is the most expensive part of the job, but it’d be significantly less expensive if multiple people shared one armory.”

Oh, he sees now: Mason wants to hire Ortez for his entrepreneurship adventure. “A start-up company,” says Ortez.

“A business partnership,” Mason replies.

Ortez frowns.

“One of the worst parts about working for criminals is that they’re the boss of you," says Mason. "That’s the worst part of working for anyone, actually, because sometimes they have some hidden agenda that you didn’t know about, and they’ve still got you on their payroll. You do what they say, and you pray that they've got your interests at heart, swallow down your morals and convictions if they don't.

Mason scoots forward. There’s the beginning gleams of—not a smile, but some hidden light, a conviction in the goodness of what he was about to say. "With a partnership, nobody tells anyone what to do. You never have to worry about having to take a dirty job because in a partnership, _everyone_ is equal and _everyone_ makes decisions together. Partners don’t work for each other, they work _together_.”

“Hm,” says Ortez.

He’s not sure how he feels about that line of thought. It's not one that he's put a lot of thought into himself. All he knows is that he can't see any fault in Mason's logic so far, and that it would appear, in theory, to certainly prevent any recurrence of finding himself working for a mafia.

“Bounty hunters don’t take commissions or work for a client, either,” Mason says. “Bounty hunters find bounties and bring them in—they aren’t paid beforehand or requested. They aren’t even commissioned by the police. Bounty hunters  _choose_ the bounty. If they agree or disagree with the bounty the police have set out, that’s their call to make. And bounty hunters working in a partnership would make all these decisions _together_ , equally, no hidden agenda or manipulation or strings. Bounty hunters do good, they can do what _they_ decide is good, _and_ they get paid for it.”

( _I was used._ ) 

“Hm,” says Ortez. 

“If multiple people sign on, then it’s completely financially possible,” says Mason, and at Ortez's skeptical look: “I’ve got a third partner already lined up."

"Hm," says Ortez.

"And you don’t have to say yes or no just this minute," says Mason, "but if you want to give it a shot… you should know that I’m offering.”

“Hm,” says Ortez.

Mason waits. He looks hopeful. Like he can see some better future that Ortez can’t even imagine, if only Ortez would be willing to trust Mason over himself, and walk out of the odd-jobs dead-end life that Ortez knows and into the unknown dark. If only Ortez is willing to admit, for once, that he doesn't know best, and take a leap of faith on someone else's word.

At long last, Ortez uncrosses his arms and sits forward.

“Who’s the third partner?” he asks.


	15. Friend

Isaac Gates is sitting in the shotgun seat of Mason’s car. Very slowly, Gates lowers the brim of his douchebag sunglasses down his douchebag nose and raises his ugly, douchebag eyebrows.

“ _Hell_ no,” says Gates.

“Uh,” says Mason, behind the driving wheel.

Ortez doesn’t even get in the car. He just turns around and walks away.

“Wait—wait, Sam—”

Ortez hears Mason get out of the car under the sound of Gates’s mocking hyena laugh. Ortez walks faster, fingers digging into the meat of his palms inside his jacket pockets, trying to focus on the sidewalk in front of him, the sun on the back of his neck, but he can’t hear the sound of people passing him, only the ragged note of Gate’s voice, derisive, like the loneliest days of their long trek back to human territory, the sound of Gates hearing Ortez say that they can make it to the forest if they hide in the cremation pit and replying, “Christ, you really are a crazy bastard.”

For what? For wanting to live?

Fuck _off._

“Sam!" 

Ortez shakes his head furiously.

“Just hold on a minute!” Mason cries from behind him. “ _What_ is going on?” 

And before Ortez can open his mouth: “Oh, I’ll tell you what’s going on,” comes Gates’s low, chuckling drawl. Ortez can feel his skin crawl. “Somehow, out of this whole shitty city, out of the whole shitty _planet_ , you managed to find—” the laughter comes louder, now “—the only two bastards who _can’t_ work together, even if you paid them a million fucking dollars.”

Gates’s footsteps click along the sidewalk. (Of course the first thing Gates does when he gets out of the military is purchase a pair of shoes to feed his ego and make himself an even larger liability on the battlefield than he already was.) When he turns around, Gates has one hand on his cocky hip, a healthy glow to his skin—he’s gained some much-needed weight, looking far better than he did at the hospital (although that was no high bar). He’s wearing a clean, pressed white shirt and a vest over it, no tie, nice jeans, hair slicked back, longer and even slimier with gel.

He couldn’t have looked more like a scumbag car salesman if he’d tried.

“It’s not that I can’t work with you,” replies Ortez, grudgingly. “I just don’t like you.”

“Yeah, see, I also don’t work with crazy people. Because honestly, what kind of sane person _doesn’t_ like me?”

“ _Stop_ saying I’m crazy,” Ortez snaps.

“Please, Ortez, I’m not an idiot. You weren’t going to get _less_ crazy after entering civilian life, that’s for sure; you lived and _breathed_ your missions.”

“Hold on—” says Mason.

Ortez holds up a hand. “Stop, Mason. This isn’t going to work." 

“Look at that," says Gates, "throwing in the towel already—”

“ _You_ don’t want this to work either,” Ortez interrupts.

“Yeah, here’s the other thing about him, Mason,” says Gates. “Ortez and I? Yeah, we were in the army together. Yeah, that’s him, that’s the one, Ortez is _exactly_ that guy I told you about.”

Mason blanches a little. “Shit. Are you serious? I didn’t know. I had genuinely no idea, it was an accident... I promise I wasn't trying to set you guys up, I didn't mean to keep this from either of you." 

Ortez grits his teeth and says nothing, because he knows that that’s true.

“Yeah, we _got_ it, Mace, it’s awkward for everyone,” says Gates. “But, y’know, mostly for me, because Ortez, if I didn’t say so earlier, is also the most annoying, tattle-tale, stick-up-his-ass motherfucker in the whole UNSC. Or he was, before he got kicked out for being such a royal pain and also—” Gates nudges Mason “—a ‘certified physical threat to his squadmates due to mental instability’—”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Ortez snarls, and steps forward to wring Gates’s crummy weasel neck just as Mason darts in between Ortez and Gates. Behind Mason’s back, Gates holds up his hands. A nearby pedestrian looks at Ortez in alarm; another holds up a phone to record who threw the first punch, in the event of a physical fight. Ortez _seethes._ “Shut _up,_ you little—”

“What did I say?” Gates says. “If you thought you were going to get _less_ crazy in civilian retirement, you’re even more deluded than I thought.”

That’s it: Ortez pushes Mason's tiny frame out of the way and seizes Gates by the front of his arrogant white-collared shirt, feels Gates squawk and struggle under the size of his hands, is _keenly_ aware of what this is going to look like on camera (“large Latino beats up defenseless white man”), and it’d be entirely worth it just to pummel Gates’s smug, stupid face, make him _eat_ his words.

But Gates is already trembling. Ortez knows that rabbit fear is real because Gates is trying to hide it, and he can’t.

Ortez takes a breath. Tries to tell Gates to fucking shove it, fuck off, take his pessimism and cynicism elsewhere because it’s _not true_ and Ortez _is_ going to get better, he’s going to adjust to civilian life and live a normal life as a normal person who never jumps at car sirens and doesn’t keep a gun in the medicine cabinet, Gates needs to shut up because if nothing else Ortez has to let Gates know that what he’s saying _isn’t true_ —

But Ortez doesn’t say anything. Ortez doesn't really know if he is or can pull off this transition to civilian life. Under duress, he’s never been a good liar.

He shoves Gates away. Gates swears and slips off the curb with his noisy, impractical shoes, and curses Ortez as he strides away down the sidewalk.


	16. Methods

The very next day, Mason is on the phone with Ortez while Ortez watches a frozen dinner spin in the microwave. The first thing he does is say that he doesn't believe what Gates said about Ortez being a danger to his squadmates, and even if Ortez was, Mason considers it none of his business.

Which is a tall claim from someone who's actively lobbying to be Ortez's partner in a firefight; if Ortez was a danger to his squadmates, then Ortez would be a danger to Mason. "It wasn't true," Ortez insists. "There's nothing wrong with me."

 _"I know,"_ says Mason.  _"Isaac can be full of shit sometimes."_

 _Then why'd Gates say there was something wrong with me in the first place?_ Ortez wonders, just when he also thinks, _Why'd Mason bring Gates on board at all?_

 _“And I know you really don’t want to hear this,”_ Mason’s tinny voice says, _“but it could still work.”_

Ortez closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. 

Mason has a way of being relentlessly determined that Ortez admires—that Ortez recognizes now as a trait aligned with the men Mason picked as his business partners, that out of this whole wide planet of Yul-Banuk, Mason met two individuals who (to his knowledge) had _nothing_ in common between each other besides how uniquely stubborn they were and could be, and _the_ most stubborn bastards were none other than the same two stubborn bastards who’d been too stubborn to die in the Great War and too stubborn to kill themselves from PTSD and, unfortunately, too stubborn to ever work together.

“It will not work,” Ortez replies.

 _“I know I sound crazy, but I’m being serious,”_ says Mason. _“I don’t just say this for no reason. Ortez, listen: both of you should be dead.”_

“That’s not a resume,” says Ortez.

 _“You two did the impossible,”_ Mason insists. _“It was a happy coincidence that you two were in the same city at all—”_

Ortez makes a long and irritated growling noise at the word _happy._  

 _“—but if you two could do the impossible once, imagine what you could do if you_ kept _working together?”_

 _Kill each other_ , is Ortez’s first thought. 

( _S_ _urvive_ , is his second.)

( _Survive what?_ is the third.)

“It’s not going to work,” Ortez repeats firmly. 

Mason lets out a long breath, not quite a sigh but not quite pleased.

 _“Because you two don’t like each other,”_ he says. 

Ortez grunts.

_“Sam, you know that this is a hell of a good shot at making it as a group of bounty hunters. You were both soldiers—good soldiers. Isaac thought the bounty hunting plan was great.”_

Ortez grunts again. There’s still three minutes on the microwave timer.

_“If it wasn’t Isaac, would you still be willing to give bounty hunting a shot?”_

Ortez sighs.

He thinks about the comfort of a sniper rifle in his hands. Thinks about trying to apply to another job at some other business, not knowing what criminals have got their roots in there. Thinks Mason talking about having a skill set, about how sometimes you can do good by putting away bad people.

“I... am,” Ortez admits. “It’s not that I don’t want it to work. It just… won’t. Not with Gates.”

 _“Okay, I’ll bite,”_ says Mason. _“Why?”_

Ortez really scowls at that one. Shouldn’t it be obvious? They hate each other. Of course they can’t work together.

 _“I mean—okay. I’ll be honest with you,”_ says Mason. _“I’m not going to pressure you. If you don’t want to make it work… that’s your decision. There’s no point in having  proposed a partnership where everyone is equal and makes decisions together if I don’t listen to the first decision you make. You’re free to come or go if you choose. I’m just asking, because maybe I can make something work that you guys haven't thought of yet. Maybe I can bring something to this table to hold it together.”_

Mason is an uncomplicatedly good person, in Ortez’s opinion. If Mason _had_ wanted to hire Ortez for his little start-up business, Ortez would have done it. He would have done it believing that to all appearances, Mason was a straightforward as they came, and that he meant what he said about his vision at the heart of his idea, and that his orders would come from that heart. Mason is the kind of person that he wishes would be in charge of the UNSC. Mason is the kind of person that Ortez wishes had owned the bar he’d worked at. If Mason made decisions for Ortez, then maybe he’d stop making bad ones—the kind of bad decisions that land him in the army, or as a nearly treasonously soldier, or working for the mafia on accident. The _very_ least that Ortez could do is give Mason the best answer he can.

At length, Ortez says: “We don’t agree on anything.”

_“Yeah, I noticed that, Sam.”_

Ortez snorts. “He and I…” Ortez begins, then stops again. English is a stupid language, but in this case, he doesn’t think Spanish would be much better. How to put the _enormity_ of their differences into words, into coherent sentences? Ridiculous, that human sounds could convey the fundamental at-odds of everything Ortez wanted from the battlefield (meaning, purpose, understanding, a clear and logical result) and everything Gates wanted (“fun,” “excitement,” “a little entertainment, Ortez, _geez_ ”).

Ortez’s actions always spoke louder than his words, and the same applies to Gates—no matter how much smoke and mirrors and loud-mouthed nonsense Gates spews out of his mouth.

“Our… methods of operation…” Ortez begins. “...are not the same. He is… erratic. Easily sidetracked, depending on his whim. He likes to boast. He is often blinded by ego, and refuses to change. He prefers improvisation—enjoys it.” Excels at it, Ortez would say, if he wouldn’t rather be caught dead than stroking Gates’s already massive ego. “He refuses to plan. He hates cooperating because he wants the spotlight. He is inefficient, unreliable, uncooperative, and—” Ortez wrinkles his nose “—he _never_ stops talking.”

A silence over the phone. Then: _“You really don’t like this guy, huh?”_

“It’s not disliking him if he’s inherently annoying,” Ortez replies.

 _“Jesus,”_ Mason mutters. _“You know that he told me you saved his life, right?”_

Ortez does not respond.

_“Yeah, he did.”_

“Not in those words,” Ortez accuses.

_“Well, he said it in his usual Isaac-y way. He said that he wouldn’t have made it out without you, that’s for sure. That’s why he went back for you. He said that if there was anyone he thought could have his back trying to get out of enemy territory, it’d be you. And you must have, otherwise you two wouldn’t be here.”_

Ortez doesn’t reply for a long moment. “...We saved each other,” is his eventual response. 

_“Yes—that’s my point, Sam. That should have been impossible. You two managed to work together once, and you worked a miracle. It’d take a miracle to do good deeds and make a decent paycheck out of it. And here you two are: you’ve already done one.”_

Only one more miracle to become saints, then.

 _“And I’m not going to lie: Isaac was a shitlord yesterday,”_ says Mason. _“I’m going to talk to him about some sort of apology—”_

Ortez begins laughing. Not the sort of laughter that people usually think of as laughter, but a sort of silent chuckle through his nose that Mason still picks up through the receiver. _“I_ will _tell him to apologize,”_ says Mason. _“If we have even a shot at making this happen, he’s got to do at least that.”_

Yes, that’s the thing: _very clearly_ Ortez has known Gates longer than Mason has, because if Mason had known him for longer than a handful of months, he’d know that Gates doesn’t apologize. For anything, really, but specifically to Ortez; and if their squad leader wanted them to work together after a fight, they would have no choice but to wait for them both to cool down alone and separately, and then later resume working together (and squabbling together) with hardly an acknowledgement that they’d been ready to kill each other less than an hour ago.

 _“But I know he’s been having a rough time adjusting to civilian life himself,”_ Mason goes on. _“So, you know… he can be abrasive, and he doesn’t exactly like admitting he’s wrong, and he’s been having a bad couple of months. It’s partly why I offered to partner with him. So just keep that in mind, when you’re deciding whether or not to join.”_

The microwave dings. 

“I’ll think about it,” he tells Mason.

He’s not going to think about it.


	17. Apology

Ortez is only a week into his search for a new job when he gets a phone call from an unknown number. He half suspects it'll be his father, and the other half of him suspects it'll be Mason (because Mason seems to have something against Ortez sitting in his apartment all day staring at online job advertisements). But Mason hasn't meant ill yet, and if it  _is_ Ortez's father, it could be news of his brother, and Ortez would actually like to know where he is.

He picks up his cell phone. Answers the call. 

 _"_ _Hey, best friend,"_ comes out of the receiver.

Ortez glares at his own phone and hopes to god that Gates can feel that from wherever he is. "You," Ortez replies.

 _"Yes, me, and you've_ gotta _stop saying that like I'm your, fuck, your arch-nemesis or something,"_ Gates's voice says.

"What do you want," Ortez says.

At this point, Ortez has forgotten entirely about Mason declaring he'd make Gates apologize. Ortez, in fact, entirely threw the idea out of his head almost on the spot, because Gates apologizes like how the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. For the first four seconds of Gates's surly " _Uhh_ ," and " _Ugh_ ," and " _Nnnngggngng_ " noises, Ortez legitimately has no idea where this is going. 

_"Okay, tell you what. Hello, old friend who I certainly didn't meet on the sidewalk yesterday and nearly get into a physical fistfight with, I heard you too are here on this shithole called Yul-Banuk. Why don't we go for some drin—"_

This is even more full of shit than Ortez's father. “Good-bye,” says Ortez, and moves to hang up.

“ _No no no no!_ ” Gates cries. “ _Ortez, come on, hear me out. You there? Ortez, seriously, tell me you’re there._ ”

Ortez grumbles and growls and grouses and reminds himself how much he hates Gates and puts the phone back to his ear. “What,” he says.

 _"Look. Ortez,"_ says Gates.  _"You don't like me, I don't like you. Really simple! We're all agreed, no need to rehash what we already know._ But _I heard that you're kind of down on your luck lately—"_

"I am not," Ortez interrupts. 

_"That's not what I heard. I heard you got fired."_

"I quit," says Ortez. 

 _"Same difference, isn't it? You couldn't fit in. Fucking civilian jobs, I tell you, they just grind and grind on the inside of your head."_ And before Ortez can agree or disagree, Gates goes on: " _Unfortunately for me_ _, Mason said that either I talk to you and get you onboard, or this is a no-go. So like, why don't we skip the formalities, just head along right to the part where you sign on and we try not to look, breathe, or exist in each others' vicinity in order to avoid strangling each other on the fucking sidewalk in broad daylight, which I, by the way, did_ not _appreciate and frankly Mason should really reconsider you as a partner choice, but seeing as you're a gigantic scary motherfucker who also has zero job_ prospects— _"_

"No," says Ortez.

" _Ortez, there's like, a hundred platoons worth of dead aliens out there who can attest to the 'gigantic' and 'scary' and also 'motherfucker' bits. Or they would if you hadn't, y'know, ripped them in half. Sometimes literally. Does Mason know about that, by the way?"_

"I've already found a job," says Ortez.

It's not a lie. Not entirely. He's found more than a dozen construction sites in need a hand, and from what the website tells him, he should be (mostly) qualified for a starter position. He's certainly able to carry heavy loads, and if there's heavy machinery and loud noises and people yelling on site, he's dealt with that before too. 

He just... hasn't applied yet. 

 _"Really?"_ Gates says, like the very idea that Ortez could have found a civilian job is inconveivable to him. Even offensive.  _"Doing what?"_

"Construction."

Gates bursts into laughter.  _"Oh, wow, you really had me going there--thought you'd found a real job somewhere--"  
_

"It  _is_ real. Yul-Banuk needs rebuilding."

 _"Yeah, but like... you? In a hard hat? Telling machines where to go and how to lay down bricks? Come on, Ortez, you think you'd last at that? First off, it's so_ boring _\--well, I guess boring might be your thing, but second off, don't kid yourself. You're a soldier. You think being a construction worker could_ ever _compare?"_  

Ortez doesn’t like that one half of him agrees with Gates entirely, but not for the reasons Gates volunteers: just being in this city, walking around, having nothing to do and nobody to tell him what to do feels like dragging a knife over a dull stone, slowly wearing down his tolerance for boredom, endless work, and other people. He can't imagine that bounty-hunting would be any sort of replacement for the military, but it'd use the skill set that Ortez is most comfortable with.

“It’s respectable work,” Ortez says anyway. “Find someone else to join your bounty game.”

“ _Uh, hello? Ortez? Mason says it has to be you._ ” A bitter, sarcastic note in Gates’s voice: _“Besides, it's not like there's really anyone else from our squad._ ”

“Plenty of other veterans who weren’t in our squad.”

Even more sour, now: “ _Like other veterans hold a candle to what we did. You just don’t get it, do you?_ ”

“There’s nothing to get.”

“ _Fuck off,_ ” says Gates. “ _One_ _job, then. Just one. Just the one time. It’ll probably pay your rent for the next three months alone._ ”

Ortez goes silent.

“ _And it’ll take the edge off_ ,” says Gates. “ _You know the one. Think of it as slowly returning to civilian life, instead of—_ ” and his voice flips to outright sneering “ _—getting fuckin’ dropped on some planet with a suitcase and a paycheck_.”

Ortez swallows.

But he doesn’t answer.

“ _F_ _ine. Fine! So sorry for thinking you were better than this_ ,” Gates says. “ _You want a nine-to-five job?  You want to force yourself into some civilian skinsuit that you'll never fit into? Go right ahead. Those jobs are meant for people who’ve never been to war, and you know that. They’ll kill you alive, Ortez. Do you want to end up like every other vet who shot themselves?  Do you want to prove all those shit nurses and doctors from the hospital right?"_  

Ortez’s fingers clench around his phone.

“ _Sorry for expecting so much of you,_ ” says Gates. “ _I figured that whatwith everything you did during the war, you'd be half-ready to do what it takes to survive out of the military, too._ ”

“I am,” Ortez snaps, if only because he doesn’t like Gates’s tone of voice, but mostly because if nothing else, Gates's wheedling, weasel voice reminds him that he was a survivor on the battlefield when he'd done anything and everything to make it out, and yes, he still is now. He's going to survive this, he's going to live, he's  _not_ going to collapse like the UNSC thinks he will, he  _can_  hold a steady job.

“ _Really?_ ” comes Gates’s voice. “ _Are you r_ _eally?_ ”

And Ortez can hear him put the receiver right up to his mouth, like his lips are next to Ortez’s ear: 

_“Then why don’t you fucking act like it?”_

* * *

 

Ortez never gets his apology.

He does, however, sign on as Mason Wu's and Isaac Gates's new business partner.


	18. II. MERCENARY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty aryashi for the idea about gates's living conditions, ur the best as always

Bounty hunting is not an disreputable or unheard-of job on Yul-Banuk, after the war; it just doesn’t pay well. The lack of UNSC control let’s Yul-Banuk split into large gangs bordering on feudalism, competing for land and resources, acquiring power—”because _someone’s_ got to have the power,” Gates says. Bounty hunting is a _pruning_ job: take out the small fries to trim away at the gang influence, cash in for money, and for god’s sake, try not to pick a fight with the biggest and baddest gangs.

Simple work, then: nab a criminal, keep the streets safe, get paid to do the jobs the police should do but are more frequently outsourced to individuals like Gates, Ortez, and Mason Wu.

On the very first bounty, everything goes perfectly: they go in, find the man in a restaurant, Gates and Wu go in as talkers to convince him to turn himself in; Wu takes good cop, Gates takes bad cop; the instant the man bolts, Gates puts a knife in the man's ankle and Ortez, at the restaurant doorway, steps out of the shadows to break the man's nose. The man falls like a stringless puppet. Wu tosses him some handcuffs and they drag the man away, leaving Gates to smooth things over with the restaurant owner (which Gates does quite charmingly). 

They dump him at the police HQ and collect money on the spot. “Better than construction, I’ll fucking bet,” Gates tells Ortez as they pile back into Wu's car. Ortez makes a policy on the spot to refuse to reply to Gates when he’s being insufferably smug.

They wind up at the restaurant they’d found the guy in, get a table, and talk about what to do with the money. They come to agree on an even split with a twenty-five percent detraction from everyone's share to go towards supplies, despite Gates’s wheedling. Wu claps them on the backs. “Of course you two are excellent at it,” he says cheerfully.

“Don’t play coy,” says Gates. “This was a small fry.” To Ortez: “This job doesn’t count. Y’know how we agreed on one job? That’s the next job.” Back to Wu: “Seriously, dude, I know you low-balled us." 

Wu takes an even swallow of his beer. “Didn’t want to frighten you two off, did I?”

Gates scoffs. Ortez suspects he’s not faking his offense. “Who do you think we are? Think we’ll get _scared_? Give me a break, dude.”

“Look,” says Wu, and hesitates. “I've actually tried bounty hunting before. It’s not a bad profession; it just doesn't pay. It’s about all the law enforcement you’ll get on some planets these days, this one being one of them. But, you know. It can get ugly. I wanted you guys to get your feet wet, first."

“Oh, spare me the theatrics,” says Gates.

“They’re not theatrics. People die, and _quite_ a lot on these jobs. Bounty hunting doesn’t always ask for the mark to come in alive,” Wu explains. “It’s not normal life out here. It’s not… civilized. It’s just constant warfare, but on city blocks and in night clubs. And sometimes it gets bloody just trying to stay alive. You gotta know that before we try a harder job.”

Gates glances at Ortez. Ortez, knowing exactly what Gates is about to say before he does, sighs and closes his eyes. Gates grins at Wu. “Normal life wasn’t doing us so hot anyway,” says Gates cheekily.

Privately, Ortez thinks that knocking a man out in a restaurant felt pretty normal. More normal than anything else had, lately.

* * *

Wu volunteers to drop them all off to wherever they need to go. He already has Ortez's apartment address and doesn't ask for it again, but Gates's "address" turns into a five minute ordeal: first Gates has to call his "boss," who's really just the person who runs the gambling ring Gates attends every weekday night; then he calls the boss's daughter to attempt to flirt with for about five minutes; upon rejection, he attempts the same thing on a very lengthy list of other women's (and some men's) phone numbers, which he makes Ortez read to him because he "can't type and read at the same time, duh" and Wu is driving the car, and then makes Ortez listen to his sleazy pick-up lines as he attempts to seduce each person. By the end of it, he's scored himself a "date," which he plugs into Wu's GPS.

"Comes with free dinner, too, and a free breakfast if I can get up earlier than her," he says, and gives Ortez a smug smile in return for Ortez's unamused glare. Gates also doesn't thank Wu for the ride when he leaves, just slams the car door and waves before waltzing into some strange woman's apartment.

"Give him a break," says Wu quietly, as he puts the car into reverse. "He got kicked out of his last apartment for not being able to make rent." Another pause: "I think it bothered him that it was a fifth-floor apartment. Not many escape routes. No windows, which was pretty awful just to look at. I'm pretty sure no escape routes is also why he won't couchsurf in my basement, even if his pride would let him." 

Ortez feels his own eye twitch. (The lightless hole that the Sangheili had kept him in also had had no windows, below ground.) 

People are always telling Ortez to cut Gates some slack, to see things his way, play nicer, stop being so uptight. Gates, according to Captain Rachoff, was a perfectly friendly young man, and he didn't see why Ortez couldn't see what everyone else did, why Ortez insisted on being difficult and different. 

Ortez had thought he'd been in the right, back then, that he'd just been able to see something nobody else could. Now, he thinks that if even Mason Wu would vouch for a man like Gates, there really must be something wrong with Ortez, and that maybe there always was.

They take the rest of the car ride in amiable silence.


	19. Mistake

On the second job, they go bigger: a reward of three-thousand five-hundred credits, which they split ahead of time; five hundred credits goes towards equipment costs, and the rest of the three thousand split evenly.

The mark isn’t _quite_ a gang boss, but he’s high up on the chain of a very minor gang, one that’s been trying to edge into harder drugs and has set up turf around an abandoned mall. The mark is charged with drug trafficking (obviously), battery, one murder, and domestic abuse. They all look at the profiles (although that’s debatable for Gates, who’d skimmed the papers) and agree that this man deserves their bounty.

Ortez drags them through pre-planning: the mark should be leaving his “office” at around five PM, which he does almost every day, usually on a motorcycle. Gates again volunteers to confront the man, keep him talking while Wu disables the man’s motorcycle; Ortez argues that he should be the point person this time around because the mark is known for his incredibly quick temper, which Gates might not be able to handle with his own quick trigger-finger; Gates first off takes offense to this and maintains that he can “sweet talk any son of a bitch” and second off takes offense to the idea that he should _ever_ do _anything_ in the “backstage department.”

Wu spends this argument detailing the different roads in and out of the area, figuring out where they’ll park the car, how they’ll enter and leave, what the most likely roads the mark will take if he manages to get away, and largely fills out most of the plans that Ortez had insisted they do in the first place.

The set-up goes much the same as last time, then: Gates on “sweet-talking,” Wu somewhere in the middle disabling the motorcycle, Ortez far in the background covering the roads that the mark might use to escape. They spend about four hours coaching Gates on what he can and can’t say: no personal topics, no mentions, _seriously_ , Isaac, do _not_ mention your name, do not mention _our_ names, you’re here on business from someone looking to renovate the lower floor of the mall and would like to speak with the person who’s currently located here, you’re here on _business only_ . Do _not_ talk about yourself. Do _not_ talk about what you do for fun or try to find out the man’s hobbies. You’re trying to stall him with a nonsense business contract, not twist the man into eating out of your palm. 

Gates rolls his eyes and says they don’t know how to make a man tick.

Wu does his research on the make and model on his own, which leaves Ortez on back-up, coordinating both of them through comms. They’re supposed to bring the mark in alive, but they still buy a sniper rifle for Ortez with the five hundred dollars they’re supposed to get with this job. Theoretically, Ortez would shoot him in the legs to stop him, but Ortez has never been good at hitting moving marks. He doesn’t protest. Instead, he spends a good hour disassembling and reassembling it, figuring out how it works from the inside out, remaking it as a machine that’s thoroughly his own, feeling it become more and more familiar under his hands.

“Are you going to jack off over it, too? Deepthroat the barrel?” Gates asks, before Wu glares at him. “What?! That’s basically what he’s doing! Look at him!”

Ortez grits his teeth and glares and resents that Gates has to find it in himself to destroy everyone else’s sanctuaries just because he has none.

But overall, the partnership could be worse. 

* * *

Gates goes off plan immediately and begins not just sweet-talking the mark, but the mark’s secretary. From what Ortez can see up on the third floor of a nearby building through the rifle scope, They start trading notes about poker, even going so far as to pull out a deck of cards. Ortez knows for a fact that the mark sees the pistol that Gates has in his waistband, because he _sees_ the moment the mark’s expression changes, and they _purposefully told him_ to stick to neutral topics.

“Wu, Gates is—” is all Ortez manages to say before the mark shoots his own secretary. Gates pulls his gun; the secretary stumbles and clutches at Gates’s arms, throwing off his aim. The mark darts back into the mall. 

“Stop the bleeding!” Wu commands over the comm. Ortez throws his rifle back onto his magstrip and bolts for the stairwell.

By the time Ortez hits ground floor, the mark’s hopped into a car and gotten out via another road altogether. Gates and Wu are on their knees, trying to stem the blood flow. “What’re you doing down here?” Gates demands.

“This man is dying,” Ortez snaps.

Gates, who’s got blood up to his elbows trying to press his own vest over the man’s open abdomen, hisses, “I fucking _know that,_ douchebag. Why didn’t you stay up on the vantage point? You could have shot the guy’s car! That’s what you were fucking _up there_ for, to get him if he tries to get away!" 

Ortez looks down at the dying secretary. Gates is correct. He should have stuck to the plan. They’d come up with those orders for a good reason, and Ortez had bolted the second a civilian went down. (And Ortez had the nerve to call himself an ex-soldier.) 

The secretary has a name tag that reads “Mui Lee” and he dies within five minutes. Gut shot, so frankly, Ortez knew it was hopeless from the start. No ambulances respond to the call anyway, not when Gates tells the dispatcher they’re near the abandoned mall district. “ _Fuck_!” Gates yells, and kicks a tire on Wu’s car, and storms away. 

Wu, for his part, doesn’t look very surprised. Ortez looks at Mui Lee’s cooling body, lying on the sidewalk outside the old mall.

It looks so familiar. It’s awful and it settles him.

“What do we do with this?” Ortez asks Wu.

Wu grimaces. Glances over his shoulder, like he’s ashamed to say it. “Honestly?” he says quietly. “Just leave it. Some city sweeper will get it.”

“Unusual trash,” Ortez remarks.

“Not so much. Not around these parts,” Wu replies.

Just like on the battlefield. It’s sick, and it settles Ortez’s stomach. In the worst sort of way, this makes complete sense to him: you fight, and either you live or you die, and nobody mourns. Finality and mortality was always clearer than life.

Gates has redirected his tantrum back in their direction. “The _nerve_ of that guy!” Gates rages. “The _nerve_! What kind of shitty, cowardly, yellow-bellied—”

“Gates,” Ortez warns, because it’s one in the morning and they don’t need to be broadcasting their location.

“He could have just shot _us_!” Gates exclaims. “But _noooo_ , the fuck just looked at us and could tell: ah, yes, _these_ guys are _new_ bounty hunters, haven’t seen them around the block before, if I shoot some unarmed schmuck then everyone will drop everything and go cry over his dying body because they’re a bag of—” Gates kicks the car tire again and yells at the sky: “ _dupable, gullible BLEEDING HEARTS_!" 

“Gates!” Ortez snaps. “Calm down!”

“We were fucking _swindled_ ,” Gates seethes. “By some two-bit trash who knows how to tug a heartstring. And we _fell_ for it.”

Ortez has had enough of the temper tantrum. He opens the trunk. Dumps his sniper rifle and the handcuffs in the trunk. “Pack it up,” he orders. “It’s too late for regrets.”

“Says fucking _you_ —you’re the one who let the mark get away!”

This was true. Ortez can take responsibility for his own mistakes. “It won’t happen again,” Ortez says. 

Gates scowls and opens his mouth to fire back, only to be interrupted by Wu: “Leave it alone. No sense crying over spilled milk. He’ll show up again sooner or later."

“He better,” Gates snaps. “I’ve got rent to pay." 

 _That’s not true_ , Ortez thinks, but says nothing.

* * *

Ortez winds up agreeing to a third job because the second one didn’t count if they didn’t get the mark. Nobody asks him when his promise of “just one job” is going to be over.


	20. Codenames

Wu realizes that they’re calling him “Wu” about two weeks into the partnership. “You can still call me Mason, you know,” says Wu.

Ortez and Gates look at each other. Look back at Wu. “Oh, we know, Mace,” says Gates.

The thing with first names is that they’re the biggest indicator of someone that shouldn’t be on the battlefield--a civilian, essentially. Which Mason Wu isn’t; both Gates and Ortez know that Wu spent more time training in martial arts than he had a “real” civilian life. And it wasn’t the regular sort of martial arts, the ones for show or tradition; it was the sort that was made to defend against real threats, and Wu took his roots seriously. Gates once called Wu a “trained killer,” and Wu had nearly kicked him out of the car for it.

Still, though. Ortez met Mason in a civilian bar. Bounty hunting, Ortez knows by instinct, is not a place for civilians.

* * *

Perhaps for this reason, Wu sits them down on the floor of Ortez’s apartment before the third job and tells them that they should pick codenames.

“That’s dumb,” says Gates. “I’m not fucking Batman who needs to protect his secret identity.”

Ortez sips his tea and says nothing. Ortez has so little opinion on these matters that he spends the next few seconds idly thinking about how he quite enjoys that Wu and Gates have silently elected Ortez’s apartment as the general gathering spot, because now he actually has to stock up on beverages to serve his guests. He’d forgotten how much he liked tea and he’s not sure why he didn’t buy some immediately after getting out of the military—had he just forgotten that he’s a tea person altogether? (How do you forget something like that about yourself?)

Meanwhile: “It’s a common practice among bounty hunters for a reason,” Wu argues. “You might not think it’s necessary now, but later, if you do decide to—I dunno, have a family, or retire—you can’t do it with half the mafia gangs in town hunting your head.”

Gates snorts. Glances at Ortez out of the corner of his eye. For once, Gates holds his tongue against lashing out about the probability of either Gates or Ortez finding a nice wife to marry, but Ortez can read the message loud and clear: Wu might have a cause to lead a double life, but for the other two, there’s no current reason to split their identities in half, and no reason either of them can foresee in the future. Whatever name they use around the clock, they might as well use on a job, and vice versa—whatever name they use on a job, they might as well use around the clock.

“You never know when you might decide to have a different life,” Wu insists. 

“Okay, okay, sure,” says Gates, in the tone of voice he uses when he’s dismissing what you’ve said on the spot. 

Wu’s eyes narrow. Ortez closes his eyes and takes a patient breath. The more he learns about Gates’s particular tells, the more patience he requires just to tolerate Gates, which is really saying something, because he already knew a _lot_ of tells and he already required a _lot_ of patience.

Ortez also does not contradict Gates's skepticism. 

“I have a codename that I used for when I was working as a security guard, so I’ll just reuse that. Try to remember to call me by it on missions, because I’d really not leave a name trail back to Megan,” says Wu. “I’ll stay as Siris. You two—”

Ortez inhales his tea and chokes.

“I hate this,” Gates says, smacking Ortez on the back as Ortez tries to not die. “Look at you—big and silent and scary, and yet could you be _any more_ uncool?”

“Sam?” Wu asks. “Hey, man, are you okay?”

“You,” Ortez wheezes. “You’re Siris.”

Wu stares blankly for a second, then: “Oh! Oh, Jesus, Sam, I thought you figured that out ages ago!”

_“No?”_

“I wore the same outfit I did when I wore the face scrambler!” Wu says.

“ _What?_ You—you didn’t,” says Ortez.

“I did, I completely did. I thought it had tipped you off and you were just too polite to say anything,” Wu says, laughing. “Jesus Christ, you really did think I just walked in one day after having never met you and decided to make you my best friend?”

“I’m—getting more tea,” Ortez says quickly, grabs his mug, and hurries off to the kitchen.

Ortez sulks over the kettle and waits for his skin to settle down. He can’t shake the conviction that if he’d been so blind as to not notice Wu and “Siris” wearing the exact same outfit, who knows what else he might have missed? Who knows who else could have taken the opportunity to sneak up in his blind spots, overhearing his conversations, watching his habits, slide a knife between his ribs before he knows what’s happened?

Behind him, Wu’s and Gates’s voices converse, then begin laughing.

It’s not Wu’s fault. Ortez knows that. Ortez is just paranoid. Reality is not as he knows it, after all. 

* * *

Take two:

“Anyway. _That_ adventure aside,” says Wu, and Gates snickers again. “Choose whatever codename you’d like, but I _really_ think that you should have one.”

Ortez rips open his new teabag. “Why Siris?” he asks.

“It was a hometown I lived in as a kid,” Wu replies. With an easy, crooked grin: “Would like to go back some day.”

A home that he’d taken the name of, then. Wu seems to like homes.

“But if you can’t pick something now, you could always pick your favorite color,” says Wu.

Gates waves a disinterested hand. Ortez has no objections.

Ortez is Green. Gates is Orange.


	21. Doubt

On their third run, Ortez kills a human being.

It turned out that the mark was packing a lot more allies and ammo than they banked on, and they wind up pinned down with aggressive fire. Everything is the same as the war except it’s not: people barking orders in his ears, gunfire over his head, weapons in his hands, mission objective clear in his head. They’re in a warehouse just past downtown, not some foreign planet, and the people firing have human faces. Child traffickers, but _technically_ people, with human faces under the handkerchiefs.

How long is he going to spend being useless? Debating doubts and other truths? He finds more and more than his COs were right: nobody needs doubt on a battlefield. Especially, Ortez thinks, _especially_ not Wu, who has no line of morality but a clearer border: either he goes home to his wife, or he doesn’t.

This isn’t a solo job. This is a job for all three partners. Ortez’s job is to have his partner’s backs. 

It’s too late for regrets, he thinks. They’re already in the thick of the job, and bullets don’t have morals or listen to Ortez’s doubts. If he can’t even do bounty work, then what _is_ he good for? Is he just going to sit in his apartment watching the walls? Hate his construction job? Live in fear of invisible threats? 

He dives for better cover. Takes a deep breath. Inches out to sight a man too engrossed in firing at Wu to notice him.

Ortez raises his gun. 

* * *

The dead man looks just like every other man Ortez found dead on the battlefield. Except this time, it was Ortez who’d killed him.

He knows why he had to kill him, but all dead bodies look the same.

* * *

The night after that, as they pile into Ortez’s apartment to collapse for the night with pizza and beer, Ortez refuses to talk to either of them. When Mason asks after him, he just shakes his head. Refuses to open his mouth. Staying silent feels like the only thing he can do.

Wu takes a shower first because Wu doesn’t want to sleep half-covered in sweat, blood, and dirt, at which point Gates takes a look at Ortez’s untouched dinner and says, “Don’t tell me you’re fucked up over that guy you shot.”

Ortez can’t do this. He puts the paper plate down and moves to stands up.

“What, you’re heading out now? You’re not bailing on us, are you?”

“The job is over,” Ortez says.

“It’s still three in the morning. Sit back down.”

“I have to go,” Ortez insists.

“No, you don’t. Why, you got a date with a therapist this late at night?”

Ortez glares. He sort of wishes he had a therapy appointment, but he doesn’t, doesn’t even see any therapist regularly, and he doesn’t appreciate the jab, either. “Therapists are trying to _help_ us.”

Gates wheezes. Gates starts honest-to-god _laughing_ , mocking and shrill, and lies back on the couch. “You idiot,” says Gates. “You _believe_ that. Oh, I bet you were even _honest_ with that one—whatsername—the one from that hospital.”

Ortez glares at him, because what else was he supposed to do? Lie? “Lying doesn’t help. We had orders. We followed them. I was trying to help her understand." 

“Obviously, she didn’t,” Gates says shortly. “And nobody will. They weren’t there. So don’t bet on those therapists, Ortez." 

Now Ortez is pissed, in the low, smoldering, uncomfortable way that Gates invites, especially so nowadays that Gates seems sharper, more cynical, even more calcified than he was before. Ortez isn’t sure if he’s disgusted or envious. “Therapists might not have been there, but they _could_ understand. If you tried.”

Gates’s head whips around. “ _You think I didn’t try?_ ” he hisses.

Ortez stares. Slowly, his eyes narrow. 

Gates looks away. In less than a second, Gates evidently decides to cover the moment with more talking: “They won’t understand, because they want to say they’d never follow ugly orders, and they want to say they’d rather die than do something shameful.” Gates rolls over and buries one half of his face into the sofa. “That one from the hospital? She only responded to money. _Money_ was her orders. A nice, fat paycheck. Unfortunately for you, she got her paycheck no matter where we wound up." 

“You say that like she doesn’t need money to live,” Ortez says.

Gates’s one eye above the pillow flicks open. “She fucking swindled you, because you were a dupe enough to hope for the best. Pulled the wool over your head and robbed you in broad daylight.”

“She was doing her job.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Gates sneers into the pillow. “Everyone’s just trying to survive. Some of us are just better at the survival game than others.”


	22. Morals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back on the horse

Ortez wakes up one morning at five o'clock sharp to see a notification from Wu: another prospective bounty from the police wanted listings. Some man named Edward Nero (possibly fake alias) who's overstepped his position as a pimp and ventured into underaged prostitution and grooming. 

A child trafficker is not exactly the face that Ortez wants to see first thing in the morning, and yet the instant revulsion in his gut centers him: today, he knows what he's going to do. He rolls out of bed and shoves a window open, sticks his head out, looks at the street below him, absentmindedly pulling his hair out of its sleeping braid. There's a lot of literal trash on the asphalt, is the one and only thing he can really notice.

Ortez didn't grow up in a city--he grew up in a compound, so to speak, a little block of apartments sublet out to people who worked for his father's company. But the compound had been clean, almost fanatically so due to his father's absence and his younger brother's after-school minder--at least the parts of it that he'd seen when he's stayed there instead of at his school's dorms. 

Yul-Banuk seems to be mostly full of dirt: beer bottles, plastic bags, smudges of grime, child traffickers, gangs cowing an overworked police. Ortez knows, logically, that Yul-Banuk is not the whole universe, and that somewhere out there are entire planets full of nice people like Mason Wu. He's trying to remember that the whole world is not full of bounty hunters and criminals, that somewhere out there are normal people who lives normal lives and never think about the child traffickers he's going to put in jail for a paycheck.

When the sun's finally peeked over the horizon, Ortez calls Wu.

"You're up," Ortez says, when he actually picks up.

_"Sure. Megan's been on a sleep-hygiene kick or something. You saw the bounty, I'm guessing?"_

Sometimes, Wu is...  _painfully_ domestic. Like looking at a beautiful piece of art, knowing Ortez can't ever touch such a thing.

 _"I bet that was pleasant to wake up to. I had to send it as soon as I found it because he's actual scum of the earth,"_ says Wu.  _"Can't get any worse than child trafficking. I'm honestly surprised it took them this long to put a bounty out for him. If there's anyone who deserves a bounty, it's him. And not to be overzealous, but I'm pretty sure he's going to get the death penalty when the courts are done with him."_

Ortez looks down. The street outside his window remains full of trash. Even the "fresh" air smells like car exhaust.

Right. Sometimes, there's bad people in the world, and they deserve to have bad things happen to them. It's nobody's fault. If anything, it's their own--the man's a _child trafficker_ \--Ortez is just doing his job.

"What time should we meet," he asks.

They agree on outfitting the plan today, then a run at Nero tomorrow. Eventually, Ortez goes back inside to take a shower, trying to scrub the grime from his skin and hair.

* * *

When they find Mr Edward Nero, one of his own child prostitutes--no older than twelve--picks up a letter-opener from Nero's desk and stabs Gates in the leg. 

"Son of a bitch!" Gates swears, and strikes her so hard that she falls to the floor, dazed. The papers that they were supposed to be collecting off Nero's desk, paper trails about the ages of the girls he was dealing with, flutter to the floor. There's a long gash up his shin and blood all along the letter opener. "Fucking idiot! We're trying to  _help_ you! Fucking hell..."

She reaches for the letter opener again. Ortez steps on it. She looks up, snarling like an animal, and without thinking, he raises his gun at a twelve-year-old girl. 

"Stop it," he orders. (He wouldn't really shoot her. He's only trying to reason with a person who won't see reason.) She freezes, obviously believing he really would kill her.

 _"Need a hand with Nero, guys, wrap it up,"_ Wu's voice says over comms. _"Just grab the papers and get over here."_

"Yeah, yeah, I got you," says Gates, and he slams a set of handcuffs on the girl before Ortez can blink. Ortez shoots him a glare. "What?" says Gates, scooping up the fallen papers. "Don't give me that look. Doesn't even know we're helping her. I'm not dying from a twelve-year-old because I turned my back on the body."

"Mr Nero," the girl gasps.

 _"Gates!"_ Wu's voice says.

"We're coming! Geez!" Gates says, and walks off without a backwards glance. "Jabbering in my ear all the time, christ! Like this stupid earpiece isn't bad enough, practically makes me deaf in one ear..."

They'll have to come back for the girl. Ortez gives her a warning look, unamused with her letter-opener stunt. She looks down, long black hair pooling around her face.

Edward Nero is yelling at the top of his lungs about how he's got money and this was aboveboard, he can pay them off, also his men will make them sorry. Gates is thoroughly enjoying yelling right back. Wu's on the phone with the police, trying to negotiate them coming to pick Edward Nero up themselves, instead of the three of them dragging this loudmouth all the way to police HQ. "Oh my god, make this guy shut  _up_ ," Gates says, looking irritated and delighted in equal measure, and more than anything, this makes anger flare hot in the back of Ortez's head.

"Carmellia!" Nero shouts. "Carmellia, tell these men you agreed to this!"

The little girl from the office begins wailing in response.

Nero goes on: "I never forced her! She did it all on her own--"

"Be quiet," Ortez tells him.

"No, no, let him talk," says Gates. "Maybe he'll tell us more fun facts about all the little girls he's stuck his dick into."

"Excuse you. I'm not an idiot," says Nero. "What kind of shopkeeper fucks his own wares? Only the best quality," he says, and gives Gates a significant look. 

"Be  _quiet_ ," Ortez repeats, tetchily.

Gates wrinkles his nose. "Yeah, actually, do  _not_ talk to me like you're trying to sell little girl pussy to me. I'm not exactly a prude, but that's like, several moral boundaries too gross even for _me_."

"You don't understand," says Nero. "I can give you  _anything_. You can have a cut--you can have a share--the money I have would set you for the next ten years. All you have to do is walk away, tell your friend to get off the phone with the police." (Wu rolls his eyes.) "Do you want me to let the girls go? I can do that. Do you want me to promise I'll shut down my business? I can do that too."

"You're going to have to tell better lies than that," Gates says, amused.

" _Both_ of you," says Ortez. "This isn't the time for conversation."

"Knock if off, we're just having fun--"

"Making a business deal," says Nero. "Everything is business, after all."

"Amen," says Gates.

"A businessman, here," says Nero, looking delighted at this unexpected connection with Gates. Gates smirks. "You know, if you  _conveniently_ let the papers from my desk go missing, we can all have a deal? You get your bounty, but the courts are unable to prosecute me, and I'll give you a significant monetary bonus after the fact. How does that soun--"

Ortez grabs the man's head and bounces his skull once into the pavement. Nero goes silent and limp. Wu and Gates go still. 

"Quiet," says Ortez.

Gates gives him a pinched look. "Jesus, you're a buzzkill everywhere you go, aren't you? It's not like any of us were actually going to take his deal."

Somehow, Ortez doesn't believe that.

The side of Nero's head begins to bleed along the pavement. The girl inside has stopped wailing. Ortez sits down in the relative quiet, crosses his legs, and waits for Wu to sort out the police. 


	23. Bickering

Ortez despises letting Gates into his apartment when Wu is not there to mediate, but Wu's house is off limits and Gates still doesn't have a place, so Ortez's apartment is rapidly turning into the base of operations. Which means that for a wake-up call as early as two in the morning for recon, there comes a time when Ortez has to invite Gates into his apartment and let him sleep on his floor. 

By "has to," he means that Gates is supposed to be doing recon himself that night, and Ortez goes in for back-up against Wu's judgment call because Ortez knows Gates's penchant to ruin things better than Wu does. Ortez lurks in the shadow of a nearby alley until Gates, armed with nothing but a switchblade, picked a fight with eight men with handguns, and Ortez has to come out of the dark and break one of their faces to scare all the rest away.

Then they have an hissing, stage-whispered shouting match in the middle of the street over the man's unconscious bleeding face about Gates's poor decisions and what was he thinking picking a fight with eight armed men and why the fuck was Ortez even here in the first place, you paranoid shadowy fuck, and if Gates really must know it's because Gates couldn't be trusted do anything by himself, including getting an apartment like a human adult; and they yelled at each other all the way back to Ortez's apartment where Ortez insisted Gates park himself for the night so he not ruin anything else about their current mission objective with his nonexistent impulse control, and neither of them even blink when a homeless man on the street tells them to get a room for their lovers' quarrel.

It's one of the few times that Ortez feels at ease on the streets of Yul-Banuk--a little moment of their bickering on the battlefield gathered and wrapped up, so that Gates and Ortez can carry it around with them together.

 

 


	24. Refusal

Ortez learns that Mui Lee, the betrayed secretary, routinely scoured the prison system for criminals with no place to go, in order to blackmail and indoctrinate into their gang. All three of them are sitting at a coffee shop table over a shared tablet when they see the article. Wu’s face shutters closed.

“Well. Hm,” says Wu.

“Corruption is everywhere. Humans are like that,” says Gates, who is never surprised by cynicism or pessimism anymore. He picks ham out of his sandwich and chews the rolled up deli meat like a cigarette.

“It’s still a shame he got caught in the crossfire. He wasn’t the mark.”

More people seem to die in the crossfire than anywhere else, by Ortez’s count. Bystanders are hit by stray bullets. Lesser gang members die. Messengers are shot. They’ve only got one mark, but it seems like everyone wants to get in the way of the point of the mission.

“So what?” says Gates. “Can’t go two yards without some mother selling her child. Can’t pull a weed up by the roots without wrecking some of the bugs. It’s all trash, anyway.”

Ortez suddenly realizes how ungrateful he was for the chain of command.

At the fringes of every bounty are people who’d chosen to support the mark’s corruption, who, by virtue of passively watching violence and even encouraging it, bear guilt themselves. It seems like everyone’s got a decent reason to be dragged to the police’s doorstep. He’s not sure if it’s simply that there are no more innocent people, or if Ortez has simply lost the ability to tell who’s good and bad anymore.

But if everyone is guilty of something to some degree, _and_ if fatalities and other casualties are going to become staples of their bounties, then precisely _which_ deaths are unavoidable? Who makes that call? Who decides what’s acceptable and what’s not? Particularly so when his gut says everyone is a threat, when his head says everyone is human, when the law says half of them are criminals and the others just haven’t been convicted?

“Are you serious?” says Wu. “Not every person who ends up in a street gang is an irredeemably bad person.”

“You can’t know that.”

“And neither can you.” Wu sounds like he’s in disbelief. “Are you really going to condemn every person before you know a single thing about them?”

“ _That’s_ a little harsh, and it’s not what I said and you know it. I’m just saying--what’re you gonna do, stop and interrogate every goon you meet? Talk about their mother and where they went to school? Who’s making that judgment call?”

Wu hesitates. “Cracking heads is one thing. That’s an _acceptable_ judgment call. Murder’s a little—”

“It’s not murder,” Ortez snaps.

Gates gives him a dry stare. “Touchy, are we?”

Ortez ignores him. “We get the job done, no more and no less. Capture the bounty as efficiently and professionally as possible.”

“Yeah,” says Gates. “And sometimes dead people are more clean and professional than live ones.”

Another warning glare at Gates. “A handcuff will do.”

“A little hard to handcuff someone when they’re twenty feet away with a loaded gun,” says Gates.

“Get the bounty,” says Ortez firmly. “Efficiently and professionally. No more or less.”

Gates echoes “ _Efficiently_ and _professionally_ ” in a mocking lisp. “First you can’t follow an order to save your life, and now you just want to get the mark and be done with it. You’re so fucking weird,” says Gates.

“Gates,” Wu warns.

“I’m serious. If I ever understand a single fucking thing in his stupid broken head,” says Gates, “just shoot me. I’d rather be dead.”

Ortez refuses to respond.

“Can you take a hint for once, Isaac?” Wu says. “Lay off him.”

“Why should I?” says Gates. “Look at him. He doesn’t even listen to me.”

“That’s because you never stop talking,” Ortez hisses, so venomously that Wu shushes him and immediately asks for the check. Gates kicks his feet up, smug, and Ortez flushes with fury to know that Ortez breaking his silence was exactly what Gates wanted. Clinging to his small resistances, Ortez refuses to speak for the rest of the meeting.


	25. Hobbies

Ortez begins to hate his free time.

There's a string of bounties that none of them can agree to take. They don't believe the police have charged the right man, for one; for another, they don't think the crime deserves a bounty in the first place, considering how minor; for another, Gates and Ortez can't really fault the man for acting in self-defense, and they let that one drop, too. The result is that they go jobless for so long that Gates becomes tetchy and unpleasant whenever he's contacted, and he snaps that of course he's tetchy, he doesn't know when his next paycheck is coming, and fuck you if you think he's going to go work some odd job in a coffee shop to make a quick buck, just find some lowlife for them to bring in already.

The other result is that nobody can reach Ortez for days at a time. Ortez, too, has become self-admittedly tetchy and unpleasant, and finds himself dreading whenever Wu or Gates will invite themselves over.

It takes so long for Wu to pry answers out of him that even Wu reaches the point of irritation, but the truth is just that Gates had been in the apartment with them when he'd asked, and Ortez would never, on pain of death, admit to a feeling in front of Gates. It's only when Wu asks when Gates has disappeared to the bathroom that Ortez can say the truth.

"I don't like having nothing to do," he says, and leaves it to a lost cause to never be able to tell Mason about the endless acres of twenty-four hours, nurses passing by, people waiting for him to die, the silent tick of the apartment clock, the mounting conviction that he's done something terribly wrong with his finances, his job, his security, security, security, unbolting and bolting the doors four or five times. Ortez is finding  _himself_ insufferable to live with, and thank god he hasn't tried to force anyeone else to put up with him. Less so to bother them, and moreso because he's run out of patience for the inconveniences he'd cause another roommate faster than they would.

They're sitting on the couch, and Wu has his prosthetic leg propped up against the chair Gates had been sitting in. There's a low table with two computers, a mass of wires, and a bag of gun oil underneath. "Maybe go out?" Wu asks, reclining and shutting the laptop cover. "There's a trivia night. I'll go with you."

Nice of him, but that sounds insufferable. A crowded room with twenty-something people, half-drunk and cramped together? Absolutely not.

"Have you tried giving dating a shot?"

Ah, yes. Ortez, who would rather take knives to his skin than have a roommate, should go out and find a person to  _date_. (Ortez clamps his teeth firmly over this nasty comment, and tells Wu with brevity that he has not and will not.)

Wu hesitates, and Ortez suddenly suspects that he's about to suggest going to a veterans support circle. If Wu was, he must have sensed that Ortez would have shut the idea down with promptness and a sour temper, because he says instead, "Have you got any hobbies?"

Ortez exercises.

"You already exercise when you're running around the city."

Ortez is silent.

"Sam."

"Everything else is pointless," Ortez says.

"Doesn't have to have a point. It can just be fun."

Ortez is silent.

Wu gives him a surveying glance.

"Hm," says Ortez, because his silence has made Wu think there's something wrong. The truth is that there's nothing  _wrong_ per se; he doesn't think about suicide or binge drinking or dying. But simultaneously, nothing is fun, and therefore it's fairly useless to go do something "just for fun."

That, too--Ortez knows how it sounds. Ortez has never been a loud or friendly person, often taken for dour before puberty and vaguely threatening ever after he'd shot up two feet and put on a hundred pounds of sheer muscle. He was never prone to impulsivity or even much passion, and he'd dated only one girl, who'd asked him first, only because he felt obligated and like he should at least give dating a shot, before he found dating and his so-called girlfriend both tedious to deal with. But with the frailties of human memory, Ortez doesn't so much remember enjoying hobbies before the war so much as it is he remembers teachers or friends remarking on how he did, and he remembers thinking that they were correct. He knows, for a fact, that he can't say with honesty that he's never been a person who enjoy doing hobbies, because he used to.

He'd liked cooking, and had been a little terror to his Home Ec teacher for insisting he knew better than she did how many spices are supposed to go in a dish. (She'd been white, for a start.) He'd listened to audiobooks while he cooked, which he'd remembered because his teacher had refused to let him do it in class, instead telling him to socialize (which he, in turn, did not do). He'd like collecting tea, which he still does now to offer it to Gates and Wu, but he remembers he used to drink it even when he was alone because his brother had called it weird of him. He'd played a lot of sports and excelled at them, but only really enjoyed them when he played against his brother, and had once told his brother that he didn't understand why people got so riled up about competing against strangers they had no stake in. More than one coach had wanted him for football, but the same coaches had remarked that Ortez seemed absent internally even when on the field, like his head and heart were somewhere else. He'd cleaned his room and his brother's for fun, sometimes, but  cleans his apartment now because dirty floors make his skin itch. He'd spent one semester in the gardening club and had been delegated to a "specialist" position in dirt pH because he couldn't bring himself to work nicely with anyone else, and also because he did, actually, know more about pH than anyone else. The most fun he'd ever had in high school was in science classes, but now he's not really sure  _what_ a genus or a valence are, and he feels no desire to find out again--not like he used to.

He doesn't feel much desire to do anything, and if he's got no desire to do anything, he might as well make the things he does actually productive, so he can put down on a piece of paper in plain words why he'd done it, to understand his own blank self in the murky, empty hours.

Therefore: exercise. Repetitive, expected maintenance of physical ability, to better do his job.

The one other thing Ortez does do in his spare time is, cautiously, look at the literature surrounding transitioning veterans to civilian life. To his dismay, he's checked everything off: he's passed the six month mark, he's gotten a job, he has not succumbed to alcoholism or gambling or any other number of addictions, he possesses clothes and an apartment, he has a social circle. (A social triangle, admittedly.) By all counts, Ortez's transition is over: he's fully out of the military and living a civilian life, and he barely even noticed.

He dislikes reading these facts more than anything, because it sounds like the books are suggesting that at this point, soldiers should be back to normal--that everything that is going to go back to normal will have by this point. And if something hasn't gone back to normal, then the pamphlets and websites and books suggest accepting that some things are irrevocably, irreparably different after war. Like a smashed plate, or (to use Gates's words) a broken brain.

"Try a library, maybe?" says Wu, just as Gates comes slouching back in from the bathroom.

"Hm," says Ortez again, and nothing else. 

"If we're not ordering a pizza," Gates interrupts, "I'm going to go and find some friends who will."

"We haven't settled the equipment costs," says Wu. "Sit back down."

Ortez settles back into the couch and lets Gates reclaim Wu's attention, slipping out of the conversation thread, unnoticed.


	26. Go

“When are we going to stop pussyfooting around?” Gates asks.

They’ve just split a five-hundred credit bounty among the three of them, speeding through the paperwork at the PD faster and faster as the police realize that the three of them are even more serious than a couple of repeat customers. The math works out to a hundred-thirty per person, with a hundred-ten for equipment costs. A hundred-thirty barely covers Ortez’s grocery bill for two weeks, if he’s even more frugal than he already is. (Frugal within reason. Gates might be able to live off fast food, but Ortez is rather fond of the vegetables that come in his microwavable dinners.)

“This guy was a fucking joke,” says Gates. “The guy mugged a couple of important people. Who honestly gives a shit about him? He barely knew how to use a gun. I could’ve taken him in my sleep.”

Gates has got his arms crossed, leaning back against Wu’s passenger car door, looking up at the cloudy sky. He looks awfully restless for someone who’s letting Ortez and Wu put the equipment into the trunk by themselves. He’s always restless, like he’s on the verge of--something. Ortez lowers his eyes and looks away.

“I also wanna sign a _lease_ sometime?” Gates adds.

Wu glances at Gates, then, because all of them know that Gates actually getting a solid apartment and lease is the hook that Wu chokes on. Still, Wu hesitates.

“We can do more,” Ortez says, as a matter of fact.

“ _Thank_ you,” says Gates.

“I’m not agreeing with you,” says Ortez immediately. “It’s just a statement of fact.”

And still, Wu hesitates. Gates’s eyes are cold and flat, and he tilts his head like following a scent. Ortez knows what scene he’s picked up because he, sometimes, holds a conversation with Wu beyond Gates’s usual fare of complaining and monologing, and therefore Ortez knows that Wu’s marriage has reached its second-year anniversary, and they’ve opened a bank account for a prospective child’s tuition fund. (Not that there’s much in it.) As far as incentives go, it’s double-edged: either a push to go for bigger bounties, or to back down and play safer, to actually see his child survive and thrive on the money he’s made.

Must be nice to be in love, Ortez thinks idly. If confusing.

“Let’s keep an eye out for a better bounty,” Wu says, at last. “Not _too_ high,” he warns Gates, before Gates says a word. “But let’s try higher.”

Gates grins, excited and smug. “That’s what I’m talking about. It’s about time we made this interesting.”

 

* * *

 

 

Two days later, a bounty is set out for Gabriel Lozano.

 

* * *

 

“Just when you think you’ve seen the worst of them,” Gates says, flipping through Lozano’s record with an impressive whistle. “This guy really never heard of covering his tracks, huh? Man, this is just _embarrassing_.”

If anything, the list of crimes consolidates Wu’s conviction: “Let’s do this,” he says. “Let’s get this done within the month. You in, Sam?”

Ortez nods.

“Isaac?” Wu asks.

Gates is looking through the articles that Ortez has amassed and put his apartment coffee table with a keen-eyed, silent interest.

“Isaac?” Wu asks again.

“This is a tough one,” says Gates, and with a slender smile: “Let’s do it.”

“Hold on,” says Ortez.

There’s miles of pre-work to be done before they can prepare to take down a well-guarded man like Gabriel Lozano, Ortez warns. Such a person isn’t captured easily, especially since he’s wanted alive to be tried for his crimes. Lozano’s security detail needs to be staked out for weeks, at a _minimum_. His schedule has to be tracked and recorded. Gabriel Lozano owns several businesses, as per the Lozano family’s tradition, and all of them have to be scouted to select the one most amenable to infiltration. They’ll need a _hell_ of a lot of bullets. They need some measure of clearance on Lozano’s security detail, so that they can, if they need to, shoot to kill. They need a profile on Lozano himself, of course, to have some measure of the man beyond his ( _very_ long) list of crimes.

But the gleam in Gates’s eye doesn’t dull. If anything, it goes leaner, tighter; the tilt of his head and the ruffling of the papers in his hands becomes less careless, more the unorganized, hyperfocused scatter of an fanatical artist in their studio; some kind of longing, some kind of hunger.

“I fucking know that, Ortez,” says Gates. “I said I want to do it.”

“We’ll need jobs in the meantime,” Ortez warns again. “Small jobs, probably, to keep funds up.”

“I want to do it,” says Gates.

Ortez gives him a measured glance. Gates _hates_ prep work. He _hates_ small jobs. “Yes, _really_ , don't give me that douchey look. I'll do the small jobs,” says Gates. “Sign me up for the grunt work. Throw some small fries at me, I’ll take care of them, put some money in the bank, and you guys can do the snooping around Lozano. We’ll get this guy by the end of the month.”

“You sure?” Wu asks.

“Hit me,” says Gates. Measured. Even. Something settling, tempering into steel, that Ortez hasn’t seen since he saw Gates locked in his ward post-cardiac arrest, clinging to his bedposts, clinging to survival and all the more alive for it.

Even Wu must see this, but Wu says nothing. “ _Don’t_ fool around,” Ortez says, since Wu won’t.

Gates smiles pleasantly. “I’ll be on my best behavior,” he says.

 

* * *

 

The first small job Gates takes on by himself, he brings the man alive to the police HQ by a sheer technicality. “It looked worse than it really was. He wasn’t even bleeding internally,” says Gates, and throws the envelope down. “The police paid in full. Give me the next guy.”

Wu exchanges a look with Ortez, as if to say _Holy shit_ and _Maybe he’ll get better?_ in one look.

Ortez crosses his arms. Sighs. Closes his eyes. _Maybe he'll get better_ , he thinks sardonically.

“We’re on schedule,” is all he says, and takes the envelope.

 

* * *

 

That night, Ortez receives a notice that his brother’s body was confirmed. His father wants him to pay for the funeral.


	27. Plans

Ortez immediately signs up to run smaller missions with Gates.

“ _I thought you hated working with him alone_ ,” says Wu’s voice over the phone.

And he does, but Wu still needs to be on recon for this mission, and Ortez will going to crawl out of his skin if he doesn’t get on the field right now. “We’ll have to learn to work together alone eventually,” says Ortez.

There’s a pause, then the sound of a woman’s voice in the background. “ _Okay. I’ll send you the details,_ ” Wu says. He covers the receiver and there’s the sound of Wu’s voice speaking in a soft tone that makes Ortez’s chest ache. Then he’s back: “ _Isaac said he wanted to pull that guy in sometime tonight, so talk to him about it._ ”

“Understood,” says Ortez. He grabs a jacket, a bag, slings both over his shoulder, books it for the door. He’s getting out of this apartment, ASAP. He needs to _move_ , to burn off this terrible feeling. He wants his sniper rifle. Gates has all the equipment at his place.

“ _And play nice with him,_ ” says Wu.

“I’ll play as nice as he deserves,” says Ortez.

Wu laughs at that.

Maybe he thinks Ortez is joking. People have an odd tendency to do that.

 

* * *

 

From the planet Ortez grew up on, his father calls him three times on the subway ride to Gates’s new apartment. Ortez lets him ring out. He leaves voicemails every time, and Ortez listens to them all, swaying with the jolt of the subway cars, unsteady on his own two feet.

“ _Just a couple hundred. You only have to come back for a few weeks. For your brother’s sake, Sammie,_ ” his father’s voice lies.

Ortez _hates_ that nickname.

 

* * *

 

“I’ve got a really fun idea,” says Gates, when he opens the door. He’s got that sly, terrible look in his eye.

“We’re not here to have fun,” says Ortez immediately.

“No, no, it’ll be great,” says Gates. “I promise.”

The mark is the owner of a self-owned antique shop that also deals in illegal weaponry and stolen trinkets. He’s an young, strapping man, large and barrel-chested. He’s got some siblings, a brother and a sister, and a girlfriend, who help him run the shop. Despite their physical size, it’s unlikely any one of them know how to use a gun, or even to fight. Exactly the sort of small-fry that Gates hates. “No challenge,” according to Gates.

And Ortez, like an idiot, doesn’t push. He lets Gates make the plan all by himself, and in his eagerness to get back on the field, doesn’t protest or criticize.

 

* * *

 

Gates strolls into the antique shop like he owns the place. Ortez is there first, feeling awkward and hating having to look like he gives a damn about old clocks. When the only other customers (an elderly couple) leave, Ortez follows them out, and flips the shop sign from “Open for business” to “Closed.”

“ _You’re Russel?"_   Gates’s voice comes over comms.

The comm doesn’t pick up Russel’s response. “ _Yeah, you could say that,_ ” says Gates. “ _Heard you’ve got a little side business going on here._ ”

Ortez strides down the sidewalk, weaving through pedestrians to the other side of the block to access the back door of the antique shop. There’s multiple businesses renting rooms in the building--he gets in through a laundromat, finding himself in a grungy hallway that leads to a hairdresser in unit 201 and a crafts supply store in 202. The antique shop is in 203. He puts a hand on his gun as he goes forward; he’s no idea what’s behind the door to 203, be it a backroom or the main floor, and he hates how little recon they did for this job. Typical of Gates. Ortez should have _made_ him do recon.

“ _No, actually,_ ” says Gates. “ _In fact, I think it might be you who'd be interested in something I’ve got for you. Heard you have a girlfriend you’re sweet on. Susanna, was it? Do you call her Susie or Anna? Ah-ah-ah--don’t move. Stay right there. That’s right._ ”

Ortez peeks through the door. It looks like a storage room, thank god, filled with old unsorted merchandise, and deserted. Ortez slips in without a sound and closes the door behind him. From here, he can see two other doors: one of them _probably_ goes to the main floor. (He _hates_ that they didn’t do thorough recon.)

He doesn’t want the door to the main room. He wants a room to wherever it is Russel keeps the illegal firearms. They need to actually bring in the contraband to get paid, not just Russel himself. That’s the plan: Gates convinces Russel into going quietly, while Ortez gets the evidence. Ortez was always better at stealth; Gates was always better at talking.

“ _We could do this the hard way, yeah, but I’d_ _much rather we do this civilly. Just come along, and everything sorts itself out. The court might even give you a light sentence for going willingly._ ”

Pressing his ear up against one door, Ortez can hear Russel’s voice in some thick accent: “Where is Anna?”

“ _You can find out at the PD,_ ” says Gates’s voice through the door and in Ortez’s earpiece.

The truth is that nobody is holding anyone hostage. People think that bounty hunters can break laws in pursuit of their marks. They technically can’t--the police just tends to look the other way, if it’s not too terrible. Holding an innocent person hostage qualifies as “too terrible.”

“Fine. Fine,” says Russel’s foreign accent. “Don’t hurt Anna.”

“ _Then move your ass,_ ” says Gates’s voice. “ _Hands in the ai--hrk!_ ”

There’s a _thud_ so loud that Ortez hears it through the door, and Ortez shoves the door open without a second thought. Russel’s got his back to him, still behind the cash register, and a huge man holding a large metal pipe over Gates’s body. Ortez puts a bullet in Russel’s leg, leaps over the counter, and tackles the huge man, knocking the pipe out of his hands in the process. “Son of a _fuck_!” Gates says, rolling to his feet and away.

Ortez slams a fist into the man’s nose, and in the delirium, slaps cuffs on the man’s right arm. The man bucks and grunts under Ortez’s legs like a fish out of water. Without thinking, Ortez shoves his hand around the man’s neck, squeezing just enough to make him struggle for air, and manages to get the other cuff around the left hand while he’s down.

“Don’t hurt him!” Russel yells. "Nico!"

“Tranq him!” Gates orders, pulling out a gun. Telling the mark they didn't intend to shoot to kill was obviously not the right move, because Russel bolts for the storage room, surprisingly fast for a man with a bullet in one leg. “No--shit! Get back here!”

“Gates!” Ortez shouts. It’s too late. Gates darts after him into the storage room--doesn’t even clear the room before he goes through the door, like Gates doesn’t know that the door is the most dangerous part of a room, god _damn_ him. Ortez does, indeed, pull out the tranquilizer gun and fires once into the man’s large shoulder, then leaves him there on the floor to let the drugs hit him. As he stands, Ortez is nearly bowled over with a sense of deja vu, of constantly watching Gates’s back on the battlefield, thinning out enemy squads for his teammates to take down, sniping enemy soldiers before Gates ever realized they were there, because Gates never fucking _watches_ for enemies at all, and doesn’t know how to stand down from a fight; and if Gates is going to run into danger, it’s apparently Ortez’s fucking job to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself, like he _deserves_.

God, Ortez is _always_ cleaning up after Gates. Ortez snarls and pulls out his live ammo gun. Even he has no idea if he’s going to shoot Russel or Gates himself.

“Gates! Where are you?” he says over comms, marching through the door. No response. Gates was never fond of the earpieces. “Gates! Copy!”

The sound of gunfire, coming through both the lefthand doorway and Ortez’s earpiece. Ortez starts running.

The lefthand doorway was left open, and he, because he actually clears a room before he enters it, gets a clear view of the stand-off Gates has wound up in: Russel is holding a gun at Gates, who’s in turn got a gun levelled at Russel, a messy, indecipherable pile of papers and assault rifles on a plastic table in the middle. Russel is not quite with his back to the door, at just an angle that he would likely notice Ortez in his peripheral vision if Ortez went in. “Do you even know how to use that thing?” Gates says, sneering, but he’s got a trail of blood down one arm, and Ortez can’t quite see where it comes from.

“Do you want to find out?” says Russel. His voice shakes, but he doesn’t sound angry. He sounds resolved.

“Christ, dude, we didn’t even kill your brother. He’s fine. Jesus.”

“And Anna?” Russel asks.

Gates begins to inch to Ortez’s left; Russel rotates around him to keep the desk between them, meaning he walks to the right. This is the only indication Ortez has that Gates has seen him, because Russel walking to his right means that, slowly, Russel’s back will be entirely to the doorway.

“If you shoot me, you won’t find out, will you?” Gates says.

Russel says nothing, but his body tenses. His right hand tightens around the gun.

“Okay! Okay, you got me,” says Gates. “We don’t have Anna. She’s fine. Totally okay.” He keeps moving left. Russel keeps moving right. Russel’s back is almost entirely turned towards Ortez. “You’ve put up a hell of a fight, that’s for sure. Great job, I guess? Looks like you've got the best of me."

"You... are letting me go," says Russel.

"Don't have a whole lot of choice about it, do I?" says Gates. "Go ahead, have a run for it. Have a nice life being on the run from the police forever.”

Ortez ghosts quickly, silently across the room, steps soundless on smooth concrete floor until he looms behind Russel. Russel stands entirely oblivious. Gates’s eyes flicker to him over Russel’s shoulder, and his mouth twitches to a smile.

“Don’t move,” Russel says.

“Oh, don’t worry,” says Gates. “I’m not going to.”

Ortez seizes Russel’s right arm and twists it up behind his back; the gun clatters to the floor; Ortez wraps one large hand over Russel’s mouth, muffling the man’s scream as Ortez yanks the arm up painfully high, until Russel’s body shakes with it.

“Quiet,” he tells Russel, lowly, softly. “You had your chance. Your brother is down. You have no more reinforcements. Give up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Gates, and wheezes. He looks victorious and viciously bitter about it. “What he said.”

Russel, to his credit, does not struggle. He doesn’t even try to bite Ortez’s hand. His only request is that they let him confirm his brother is still alive, which they do; and then they lead him, at gunpoint, to Wu’s car, lock him with handcuffs, and throw him in the back seat.

 

* * *

 

That’s when Gates and Ortez round on each other.

“What the fuck was that?” Gates demands.

Ortez crosses his arms. Russel is staring inquisitively through the war window. Gates fiddles with the fancy car key remote, and the windows turn black. “You were fooling around,” Ortez says. “You botched it. Your plan failed.”

“Yeah, I noticed, no need to rub it in! Sometimes that’s what _happens_ to plans, ever notice that?”

“It was a bad plan,” says Ortez.

"That's just because you're allergic to fun, and you never let me have any."

Ortez seethes at that, because what part about lying to a man to tell him his girlfriend is being held hostage is  _fun_? “It was a bad plan," Ortez repeats, "and you made it worse by showing off and boasting. You ran _directly_ into fire, alone, without back-up, after a person you knew could have live firearms—”

“So what?” Gates cries. “Christ! I’m always running into fire! That’s my fucking job, asshole! What’s crawled up your ass?!”

“I had to clean up _your_ mess! Take responsibility!”

“No, you left your post--you were supposed to be digging up his papers—”

“And leave you to get shot?” Ortez snaps.

Gates fumes, and opens his mouth to respond. Ortez interrupts: “We need you to survive if we’re going to survive. What if I hadn’t been there?”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to be there!”

Ortez leans in, thunderous. “I saved your skin,” Ortez hisses. “You and your half-baked plan would have collapsed without me.  _Stop_ trying to get yourself killed.”

Gates’s expression of fury twitches, falters. He rips Wu’s car keys out of his own pocket, unlocks the door, and throws himself behind the driver’s seat. “Get in already!” he says, and slams the car door with a force that rattles the windows. Gates drives them to the PD himself with barely a bandage over his wound, and both of them say absolutely nothing in the furious silence all the way there.


	28. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> credit to aryashi for the codenames conversation

Wu barges into Gates’s apartment while Gates and Ortez are licking their metaphorical and unmetaphorical wounds. “Oh,” says Gates flatly. “Hey, Wu.”

Wu pinches the bridge of his nose at the tone. “Okay, Gates,” he says. “I’ll bite. What did you do.”

Ortez crosses his arms smugly. 

“First of all, I take offense to this,” says Gates. “I did nothing wrong. We got the bounty, the mark’s in jail, nobody died—”

Ortez, who’s got his hands full of bloody gauze and bandages, glares at Gates. And Gates, for some reason, hesitates with something that looks like wariness.

“A tiny thing,” says Gates. “Itty bitty. Just barely scraped me. I’m going to live, obviously; I’m too petty to die.”

Wu kicks the door closed. “I’m aware,” says Wu. “What I  _ don’t _ know, actually, is why Russel is reporting to the police that a man named  _ Gates _ apprehended him.”

Gates and Ortez glance at each other.

“Codenames?” Wu reminds them.

“Oh,” says Gates, and then, “Ohhhh!” and looks at Ortez in delight, covering his mouth in mocking horror. Ortez closes his eyes and mentally kicks himself. “Ohhhhhh, it sounds like  _ someone _ forgot to follow the rules—”

“I got it,” Ortez interrupts. He doesn’t need Gates to rub it in. 

“See, Mace, I told you, this man doesn’t know how to follow an order if his life depended on it—”

“I  _ do _ ,” says Ortez. And then to Wu: “It won’t happen again.”

“Oh, come on,” says Gates. “I don’t care. Seriously, you’re getting riled up over nothing. I’m a bounty hunter and I really don’t care who knows it.”

“It won’t,” Ortez repeats, “happen again.”

Gates gives him a look of wary distaste. “...Geez. Okay, sure. Won’t happen again.”

This is no small lapse. Ortez knows what codenames mean to Wu’s life. It’s the thin line between his bounty hunting life and the domestic life he’s attempting to build with his wife, and in fact the codenames are the only line. All of Mason Wu’s home safety depends on their adherence to calling Wu “Siris,” and in fact referring to Gates and Ortez as “Orange” and “Green” respectively, because if Gates and Ortez were known, the association could easily be linked back to Wu.  

Wu sighs, short and deep. “Okay. I didn’t mean to blow up at you. It’s just… you know. This job. The Lozano one.”

“Oh, come on, Mace. You kill people for a living—”

“I do  _ not _ ,” replies Wu.

“Right, sure--but you can’t seriously be scared of this guy. Gabriel Lozano? Every account we have of him reports him as spineless. Terrible, obviously, but spineless.”

“It’s no small thing messing with the Lozanos,” Wu says.

“Are you getting cold feet?” Gates demands.

“--No,” says Wu. “Of course not.”

Of course Wu isn’t getting cold feet--of course--but going after Lozano also wasn’t Wu’s idea. Because of his  _ family. _ Ortez scowls at himself. 

Ortez’s phone vibrates. Gates glances at it, but only sees  _ Unknown Number _ on the screen. It is, without a doubt, Ortez’s father. 

“What happened to you guys out there, Sam?” says Wu. “This isn’t like you. Did you even scout out the place before you went in?”

“Uhhhhhh,” says Gates, as if only just then realizes that prep was a thing that Ortez usually required them all to do. “Yyyyyyyyes….?”

Ortez grabs his phone. “I’ll be back,” he says, and leaves the apartment altogether.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t go far. Gates is on the second floor, and he heads to the far side of the hallway. The phone has stopped ringing by the time he gets there. He does not listen to the voicemail.

He must have taken too long, because Wu comes out first, and Gates trails behind him. “Hey,” says Wu. “Do I have to be worried about something?”

Gates is trailing behind him, looking unsure. Not quite fearful, but cautious, for the first time, as if he’s never seen Ortez before and is unsure of who he is. That, more than anything, grates on Ortez’s bones in some irritating way, because if Gates, who’d been there through the whole damn war, couldn’t comprehend who Ortez was, then they were both entirely lost. 

“No,” says Ortez shortly. He’s sitting on the hallway floor, looking out through the balcony bars to the grey city skyline. And then, perhaps out of sheer irritation for Gates’s uncomprehending stare, he says, “My brother is dead.”

Gates’s eye twitches. 

“Oh--I… I’m sorry,” says Wu, almost stiltedly. Wu was never told that Ortez ever had a brother. 

“I’m making funeral arrangements,” says Ortez, dispassionately, even to his own ears, like he’s waiting to see if it’ll be Gates or Ortez who breaks first. “My father wants money for it. There is no need to worry.”

“Your  _ father _ ?” says Gates.

Ortez’s silence is flat and frigid.

“You’re  _ speaking  _ to him?” says Gates, disbelievingly.

“His brother is dead, Gates,” says Wu, then back-tracks: “Are you and your father not…?”

“Not usually,” says Ortez. Again, without feeling. A mission debrief. “It’s nothing. None of your concern. Liam will be buried one way or another. I’ll wrap it up. You can go back in.”

Wu hesitates, but if anything, this, finally, hardens Gates’s resolve. “Oh, good fucking lord, Sam,” says Gates. (One of the few times Gates ever called him by his first name.) “Are you kidding me right now? You’re actually going to call him?”

Ortez says nothing.

“Jesus. That’s  _ your _ funeral,” says Gates. “You know that, right?”

“Gates—”

But Gates shakes his head without humor. “This man was a drain on your life,” says Gates. “Yes?”

Ortez glares at him. 

Wu says, “You don’t know that—”

“He does,” says Ortez. And to answer Gates’s question: “That’s what I said.”

They are, for one of the first times (and not the last), referencing an event during the war, when they’d all had the displeasure of sharing what home they might go back to, and Ortez had admitted that his father’s tendency to leave home for months and come back hundreds of dollars in debt from parties, gambling, and drinking was--not Ortez’s favorite thing. Ortez’s brother had been far more self-sufficient than Ortez’s younger brother; judged by their decisions, there was only one small child in the household, and it was the biologically oldest person there. Ortez had been glad to attend a school that would board him. And he has  _ no _ doubt in his mind that his father, who’d frequently hounded Ortez’s aunt for money until she ceased to speak to him, was intending to make Ortez’s income his new spending money.

“That man is a leech. A parasite, using you for his own gains,” says Gates. “He’ll bleed you dry until there’s nothing left. He’ll kill you. You told me that yourself.”

Wu looks at Ortez, alarmed.

“That’s true,” says Ortez. Expressionless. Cold. Gates’s eye twitches again.

“Then the solution here is very simple, Ortez: if you want to let him kill you, call him back. And if you want to survive, cut him off.”

Wu says, “It’s not that—”

“It is,” Gates interrupts. 

“I don’t think—”

“Sorry if we don’t subscribe to your happy-family philosophy,” Gates snaps. “But that’s the way life goes in the real world. Sometimes you leave people so you can survive. Not everyone makes it.”

Ortez lowers his eyes. 

“This fucker doesn’t even  _ deserve _ to survive,” Gates says. “Look around. Smell the roses. Life’s fucked up and bullshit. At the end of the day, we’re all fighting over the privilege of staying alive, scrabbling for scraps of money. Survival belongs to the fittest. The fastest. The strongest. If you talk to this shithole, you’re inviting dead weight--you’re volunteering to carry some ungrateful son of a bitch through the hellzone, and he’ll put a metaphorical bullet in your back the minute you take your eyes off him. And if Ángel Ortez didn’t want to be left to die, he shouldn’t have been such a parasitic bag of dicks.”

Silence from Wu. 

“You have to fight for survival, and not everyone lives,” says Gates. “You know that. We agreed.”

Ortez does not respond.

“We  _ agreed _ ,” says Gates, a little more insistently, a little more unsure and all the more angry for it. “We agreed to cut our losses and survive.” 

And they had. 

But by god, does Ortez hate admitting it. 

Gates lowers himself to look Ortez in the eye. Expression narrow and furious, like Ortez’s refusal to agree has betrayed him and everything he holds to be true. (Maybe it has.) 

“Survival is a privilege,” Gates hisses. “And if you call this man back, you’re on the fast track to losing it.”

Wu throws up his hands, turns around, and walks away. Both of them look up at him. Wu turns back, still walking away, and looks directly at Gates. “It’s your call,” says Wu warningly, speaking to Ortez without taking his eyes off Gates. “Evidently, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

That’s because Wu doesn’t, Ortez thinks. 

“It’s not my decision,” Ortez tells Wu, quietly. “It was my father’s. It’s his bad choices that led us here.” 

He stands up. Ortez will wire money for the funeral, but like hell he’s going to meet his father in person. He doesn’t need to be suckered into that, not with the Lozano job coming up. He’ll change his phone number. Emails are easily deleted, if the man really must contact him. It’s only logical. It’s only efficient. He says, “Gates is right. We don’t have the time or resources to deal with this.”

“Oh-ho-ho, did I just hear that?” Gates says. “Mace, you heard that, right? Ortez, say it again, say I’m right—”

Ortez glowers darkly. “You were right  _ once _ ,” he says. “You’ve yet to make a habit of it.”

Gates rolls his eyes. “Oh, shove off. You’re insufferable, you know that?”

Wu disappears from the hallway altogether, and the apartment door closes. Ortez stares after him. 

“Oh, whatever,” says Gates, and hunches his shoulders. “He couldn’t understand.”

 

* * *

 

Ortez goes to bed that night with the minimum money required for his brother’s funeral sent through wireless transaction. His father’s number is blocked, Ortez has a new phone number ready to go through with the phone company, and he’s set up a new email. He closes his eyes and sees rows and rows and rows of cells, human prisoners and experiments in Sangheili hands. Back then, Ortez had wanted to go back and save as many other POWs as he could, as if he could bring twenty-something over half-dead humans on his back through miles of warzone, through land crawling with aliens. 

He’d been so stupid. 

Only now, in the dark, the empty sound of his apartment in his ears, fully out of the military, does Ortez admit what he’d never, ever dared breathe to to Dr Hamid, to any nurse, to any other soldier: he’d left his squad to die in that Sangheili prison. Ortez and Gates had been the only survivors not because their squad had all been killed in combat, but because they’d been left to die.  _ Ortez and Gates _ had left them to die. 

Gates had been right then, and he is right now, and he will be right from now on, whenever Ortez is too weak to admit so. Not everyone makes it. You have to kill to live. You have to leave people behind to keep going. Survival is a privilege to those willing to fight for it. And it’s not your fault. 

He sits up soundlessly in the middle of the night. Pulls a knife from his duffel bag. In the dark, he gouges the name  _ Samuel Ortez _ from his own dog tags. 

It’s not your fault. 


End file.
